Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

‘Nothin’ to it, Solly. All you do is, first thing you get up tomorrow morning you climb that big hill they have out there ’n when you see the Indians comin’ you run right back down ’n tell the settlers. Nothin’ to it so long as you don’t fall asleep on the job.’

The light broke over Sparrow as the cheap gag was driven home. ‘I know,’ he admitted forlornly, ‘I listen to the radio sometimes myself.’ His face was peaked with disappointment as he waited now only for Frankie to pay him off for the delivery.

‘It’s your chance to tell him who rolled Louie that night,’ he told himself – and let the chance pass. What was the difference what Frankie thought any more? He rose to go.

‘Don’t go,’ Frankie begged him.

‘I got to,’ Sparrow realized, ‘I’m gettin’ that guilty feelin’ again, like the aces ’r gonna bust down the door.’

Without a warning Frankie leaned forward and slapped the punk squarely across the nose with the flat of the deck. The punk sat down. ‘What the hell is gettin’ into you, Frankie? I don’t have to take that off you.’

‘You got that comin’ for a long time, Solly.’

‘I tried to tell you once you got me wrong about Louie, Frankie. You wouldn’t listen. I wasn’t the guy got his roll. If I had we would of split like always. You can believe me ’r not.’

‘I know who got the roll now awright. But you still had it comin’.’

‘Awright – I ran ’n you got busted. I know I done bad then – but can’t you figure I got scared just like you done the night by Schwiefka’s hall? Can’t you figure what another department-store rap’d do to me, Frankie? I couldn’t even get paroled. Don’t that give me the right to get scared too?’

Frankie listened with his head moving a bit from side to side, unable to decide whether to listen a while longer or just to use the deck again. It had felt pretty good for a minute there. ‘It ain’t for that neither,’ he cut Sparrow short.

Sparrow watched the hand on the deck. ‘I won’t take another crack off you,’ he told Frankie quietly.

The hand drummed the deck a moment, thinking that over, then moved off the cards. ‘You want to know what for?’ Frankie demanded. And answered himself, ‘I’ll tell you what for.’

Sparrow waited. He wanted to know all right. ‘I don’t know why you done that to me, Frankie.’

‘’Cause you double-crossed me on the streetcar the time Cousin Kvork picked us up on Damen ’n Division for nothin’ ’n Schwiefka sprung us the next day. You didn’t have no two pair on that transfer. So I owe you nineteen more.’

Sparrow goggled, he was really stunned. He couldn’t remember the game played in the cell nor how he’d evened the score on the trolley.

‘Don’t give me the goof act,’ Frankie threatened him, ‘hearts for noses -’ n you losed both games.’

Sparrow got it then all right. ‘I don’t remember what I had ’r what you had, Frankie,’ he answered honestly. ‘But if you think I’m settin’ here while you try knockin’ my nose off you’re gonna get your own bust in a brand-new place.’ His hand touched the glass ash tray on the arm of his chair.

And felt hardly afraid at all. For the first time in his life he looked at Frankie with the knowledge that it wasn’t himself who would have to back down. ‘It’s the new way of doin’ things, you might call it,’ he explained.

Frankie tried to grin but the grin was weak. He scattered the deck across the bed in a gesture of surrender. ‘Maybe you won anyhow, I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘I don’t even know what put it in my head. All kinds of things go through my head these days, how they get in there there’s no tellin’ any more. It’s just the way everythin’ is, I guess – you know how everythin’ is, Solly? Let me tell you how everythin’ is.’ He sounded like a man talking on and on for dread of something that will move through his brain the moment the tongue ceases its babble.

‘I can see how everythin’ is awright,’ Sparrow assured him.

‘No, you can’t see. Nobody can. Nobody knows, just junkies. Just junkies know how everythin’ is. Sit down, Solly – please. ’

The light was fading in his eyes now, they were sinking into his head and the freshness the drug had brought to his cheeks had turned into a dull putty-gray. He said ‘please’ like a man begging for a dime and just the way he said it left Sparrow feeling that he himself had just swallowed a mouthful of dust. ‘If it’ll do you good to talk,’ he thought with the taste of dust on his tongue, ‘I’ll listen this one time. Because I knew you when you were the best sport I knew my whole life. What’s your story, cousin?’ he offered aloud.

Frankie coughed into his palm. ‘It’s like this, Solly. You put it down for months ’n months, you work yourself down from monkey to zero. You beat it. You got it beat at last.’ He was talking low and breathlessly, like one who fears that, if he doesn’t get his story told quickly it will never be told at all; like one who believes he is the only one who knows. Really knows. ‘You know you got it beat. You got it beat so stiff when the fixer says, “It ain’t gonna cost you a dime this time, I got some new stuff I just want to try,” you tell him, “Try it yourself,” ’n give him the laugh. When he tells you, innocent-like, “The hypo is in the top drawer over there, help yourself any time,” just to put it in your head how easy it’d be, you turn him down flat. Because gettin’ fixed is the one thing you’ll never need again all your life.

‘Three weeks later you wake up, it’s dark out but not like night ’n it ain’t morning neither – it’s just Fix Time. It’s comin’ on like a wave way out there, bigger ’n bigger ’n comin’ right at you till it’s big as this hotel, it hits you ’n you’re gone. You’re so sick you’re just turnin’ around down there under that wave not carin’ who knows, your mother ’r your sister ’r your buddy ’r your wife – anythin’ just so’s you can stop drownin’ for a minute.

‘Nobody can stand gettin’ that sick ’n live, Solly. You have to puke ’n you can’t. You just heave ’n heave ’n sweat ’n heave ’n still nothin’ happens – then somebody turns on the faucet in the sink or the bathtub down the hall ’n just the sound of water runnin’ rolls your whole stomach over on top of itself ’n you got to puke ’r die.

‘Then you don’t even know no more where you’re sick – if you think just for one second, “It’s my poor gut” – it starts bustin’ your brains out the back of your head just to show you. So you think it’s your head ’n it slams you a dirty one in the stones – it’s here ’n it’s there ’n you’re shaggin’ it in a dream, tryin’ to pin it down to some place you can feel it so you can fight it.

‘But it won’t stay still ’n you can’t get hold ’n if you don’t pin it in a minute you’re dead’ – he brushed the buffalo-colored shag of hair out of his eyes – ‘that’s all. There ain’t no “will power” to it like squares like to say. There ain’t that much will power on God’s green earth. If you had that much will power you wouldn’t be a man, you’d be Jesus Christ.’ He began drying the sweat out of his armpits with the pillow-case. ‘You know what you brought me in that little bottle, Solly?’

Sparrow didn’t know. Frankie knew he didn’t know. He wanted to tell Sparrow so that the punk would never forget. So that everyone in the world who didn’t know would know forever and always what Solly had brought him in the little brown bottle.

‘I knew, Frankie,’ Solly admitted. ‘I knew what was in the dirty bottle awright. I guessed when Pig asked me-’