Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

‘You didn’t know a thing. You didn’t have no idea at all. You still don’t know. You just think you know. You think you know everything.’

Sparrow wanted to go now, he could scarcely sit still for restlessness. And yet it was so hard, it was just too damned hard, to leave Frankie talking to himself all alone up here like this. ‘What was in it, Frankie?’ he humored the man on the bed while watching him hopefully for signs of sleepiness. He could get Frankie’s shoes off if he’d just drowse a bit, then turn off the light and by morning they’d both feel better.

But Frankie didn’t look sleepy at all. A smile both benign and wan wandered across his lips and a look of childlike wisdom entered his eyes. ‘I’ll tell you what was in the bottle, Solly.’ He looked demure, he looked so sly, his eyes sought the floor in a womanish sort of coyness completely strange to Sparrow.

‘A itty-bittsy little old monkey, Solly, that’s what you brought me in the bottle. Such a little feller he can hide hisself right inside there. You know where my itsy-monkey is now, Solly?’

These changes in mood, so swift and strange in one always so slow in all moods, brought a cold tug of fear to Sparrow’s heart.

‘I guess he was just too little for me to see then,’ he humored Frankie again.

‘It’s just what I thought you’d say’ – Frankie looked triumphant – ‘’cause he ain’t little at all no more. He’s growed up into a real great big feller just since you been settin’ there, Solly. He weighs thirty-five pounds ’n he’s settin’ right here on my back usin’ all his weight ’cause he knows I got to carry him around wherever I go so’s I don’t get lonesome for nobody no more. Can you see him, Solly?’

‘Why don’t you try to sleep awhile, Frankie?’

But Frankie was wound up like a clock and there was nothing to do but listen to him till he ran down.

‘Some weeks he only weighs twenty-six pounds, that’s when I cut him down a little. Once I cut him down to zero, I starved the poor little feller to death. They buried him out at Twenty-sixth ’n Cal.’ N that’s a funny thing right there.’

‘It don’t seem so funny to me, Frankie.’

‘What I mean is so funny is when he come back to me last week he weighed forty-four pounds – where’d he put on all that weight, Solly?’

‘It must of been another monkey, Frankie.’

‘Can you see him yet, Solly?’

‘I think I can see him a little now, Frankie.’

Frankie grew cunning. ‘Want to take him a little walk yourself, Solly? There’s still two quarter grains in the bottle – you fixed me so I’ll fix you ’n then we’ll be buddies again like we used, helpin’ each other out ’n hustlin’ some mark so fast he can’t figure which one of us hustled him ’n then we get together afters in the back booth by Antek ’n nobody knows what we’re laughin’ about, just you ’n me, the good old buddies again ’cause bygones is bygones. What you say, Solly? A free pop on me? Just to see what it really feels like? Then you’ll know, you’ll be more broadminded like.’

‘I got enough worries without that, Frankie.’

‘That’s just the point, buddy.’ His voice began drifting somewhere the other side of the room, the other side of the curtained window, the other side of the street and the other side of the world. ‘There’s so many little worries floatin’ around ’n floatin’ around, why not roll ’em all up into one big worry? Just like goin’ by the loan shark ’n gettin’ enough to pay off all the little debts with one big one? That’s where I’m bein’ smarter than you, it shows I’m gettin’ out of the hole, it’s what you ought to do too so’s we can be buddies again: roll ’em all up into one big one like me, Solly.’

‘I don’t have that many, Frankie.’

Frankie laughed derisively, with a sort of loose contempt for himself and Sparrow and everyone. The only man Sparrow had ever heard laugh like that had been Louie Fomorowski. ‘You got more worries than you think, punk,’ Frankie told him. ‘You got more worries than Dick Tracy. Compared to you I’m little Orphan Annie.’ Cause my little worries ’r almost over but yours ’r just beginnin’.’

His voice returned from the other side of the world to stir the curtain a moment and came right up to Sparrow. ‘Why you think Pig sent you? ’ Frankie pressed both hands to his temples as if trying to hold his mind onto a single big idea. ‘Get out of here, punk. I had it figured the minute you walked in that door, I just been tryin’ to hold you to see if I was right. Now I don’t care if I’m wrong ’r right no more-’

Sparrow didn’t figure it – he only felt it. He was at the door and the knob was in his hand – it was turned for him from the other side and he had to step back to keep from getting banged by the door, they came in that fast, and he hadn’t even heard a house key in the lock.

Bednar behind Kvorka. Both in citizen dress and their hats on their heads. With nothing in their hands.

Bednar put his back to the door. ‘Get the hypo, Sergeant,’ he told Kvorka.

‘Now you know why Pig sent you?’ Frankie taunted everyone. ‘This time you’re comin’ with me, punk.’

‘’N we hope you’ll stay longer this time than the last,’ Bednar assured Sparrow with one hand in the punk’s narrow belt.

Frankie rose, forever yawning, and studied Kvorka tearing up the bedclothes. ‘Holy Mother, look at that cop go,’ he laughed shrilly. ‘They still payin’ sixteen bucks for turnin’ in a hypo, Cousin? Make the cap split it with you – it’s in the cigar box on the radiator, right there under your nose, it ain’t even dry yet.’

‘On your feet, Dealer,’ Bednar scolded him. ‘We’re takin’ a little ride.’

Some poolroom sharpie lounging in the lobby came to a sitting position when he spotted two hustlers being pulled in by a couple soft-clothes dicks and looked like he wanted to help get them to the station. But Bednar guided his little caravan unobtrusively out the side entrance and into the panel wagon waiting in the alley and wheeled away without a witness. It wasn’t the sort of pinch to which Bednar wanted a witness.

As the wagon wheeled around the corner newsstand Sparrow heard the amputee, still pushing his papers there, call into him confidentially: ‘Graziano reinstated!’

Someone was always reinstating somebody. And all the way to the station listened to Frankie, still jabbering away, catching at all sorts of ragtags as if the stuff had given him some kind of delayed kick or other. He was going to beat the tubs with a big-time band, he was on his way now to the La Salle Street Station to catch ‘the fastest flier they got there, I ride it lots of times, they call it the Twentieth-Century Note, somethin’ ’r other.’ Then he had just bought out Schwiefka and was adding four tables and a line direct from the track – ‘Now’s your chance to talk payoff,’ he told Bednar and when Cousin Kvorka urged him, ‘Take it easy, Dealer, we’re still for you,’ he answered Cousin quickly: ‘How’d you like to transfer up to Evanston, Cousin? Just say the word.’

He was buying a new Nash, he was getting divorced, he was sending Sophie to ‘Myer brothers,’ and he was getting married as soon as ‘all the dough I got outstandin’ starts comin’ in.’

‘Outstandin’ is right,’ Sparrow put in. ‘Standin’ out in the alley, you mean.’

‘Yeh,’ Frankie agreed strangely, ‘’n then I wonder why I feel so cold the next day.’

Whatever he meant by that, his tongue had ceased to rattle. The rest of the way to the station he diverted himself simply by rapping the bench between his knees with his knuckles and humming idly.