Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

Vi and the Jailer and that Frankie, leaving without so much as a word of good-by, all he ever thought of was himself. The preacher, droning eternally on and on, began hinting certain things about certain people, he was worse than any of them and in sudden fitlike fury she pulled the radio off the dresser, wheeled into the hall and dropped it over the rail without so much as looking to see whether someone might be coming up the stairs to catch damnation on the point of his skull.

She heard the crash below and the Jailer’s startled voice: ‘Who t’rows t’ings?’ The set had missed him by inches.

‘It’s that priest talkin’ against me again,’ Sophie explained, knowing she’d done just right, and wheeled back into the room, locking the door behind her. Then called, to answer the Jailer’s angry rapping, ‘You’ll all get just what you got coming! I’m giving it to all of you now!’

There was no further knocking at her door all that endless afternoon. Only, toward evening, the rapping of Jailer’s hammer where he was putting a couple final raps to the radio. ‘He’s always better at knockin’ somethin’ apart than puttin’ somethin’ together anyhow,’ Sophie told herself with pleasure.

The evening of the night that no one came at all and she wanted the moon to move.

Only the moon to move, it seemed so little to ask, for it moved for everyone else.

All anyone ever did for her was to flush the toilet down the hall and when would he ever quit flushing that nasty thing anyhow?

Not one of them heard, hours later, the stranger’s step in the hall below, listening there to hear whether he were expected, then begin coming on heavily, like one almost too tired to mount one more flight. She peered out, the door an inch ajar, like an animal expecting pursuit and knew: ‘It’s Frankie comin’ home.’ To make it all up to her for leaving like that without even saying goodbye.

Without even telling her what it was for that the wagon men had wanted him. Without even telling her it was all a lie about him and that public hide on the first floor front. Without giving her so much as a word to fight with when the neighbors said things behind her back. It would serve him right if she told him now: ‘You’ve brought it all on yourself. It’s every bit your fault.’ But by the way he came on, so heavily with every step, she could tell how sorry he really was. He was sorry at last, truly truly sorry, he’d come back to make it all up to her now.

To make it all up, and have something to eat, a place to sleep and a place to hide – what was the difference whether he’d slept with this one or that, whether he’d hit some other bum on the head sometime or other – the main thing was he was coming back, he was sorry, for he loved her after all. She bit her nails with excitement.

Heard the struggler below lean for breath hard against the rickety rail – she hoped he just wasn’t drunk again. If he was she’d have to get him sober right away, she would have to work fast and be ever so still, he’d be so tired, so hungry and sick and broke and everyone against him – he would need her so badly and she whispered through the door all the way down the stairwell: ‘Hurry, honey,’ as loudly as she dared.

Then that same old fool down the hall, who by right should have been in bed for hours, began the same old record on the same dreary old all-night vic.

‘It all seems wrong somehow …’

The struggler heard, she heard him turn, he thought there was a party going on and had best not take such a chance after all. The door closed though the record went on.

‘That you’re nobody’s baby now.’

When it stopped she realized he must be going around the block, he was going to use the fire escape and fool them all, she would have to have the fire-escape door open for him.

Then down the hall he would come so softly, no one would hear his step at all. No one would know where her Frankie was so safely hiding.

No one, not even that Vi would know, she would feed him and bathe him and make him sleep and take care that passers-by didn’t waken him.

But the moon seemed too bright. Past all the blind doors to the rust-colored escape window that only long disuse had fastened: she got the shoehorn between the door and the sash and it came wide with a tiny flaking of rust onto the blanket across her knees. She had to stand up to let him know it was safe now to come up from the alley shadows.

Yet heard no steps on the iron stairs. No feet feeling for rusted rungs. No low whistle in the winter night to tell he was coming at last to her now.

Leaning upon the rust-colored wall, her feet felt blindly for the iron, her eyes blurred with winter moonlight; a tenement moon, a fire-escape moon, so bright, so steady, so unmoving – if it would move just ever so little, then he could come – he was afraid while it was shining so bright, and from behind her, from the room where the vic had played, a woman’s head was thrust out of a bright-lit door to ask, ‘Who’s prowlin’ around here?’

Then saw the vacant wheelchair and Sophie leaning for support upon the rail. From the moonlit air above, the troubled air below and the unbalanced air all about Sophie heard their voices clamoring toward her.

She could walk by herself if they just didn’t all hold her so tightly, she knew.

‘Take it easy, sister. One footsy at a time. That’s our girl.’

She was going, much too fast, down the gutter-colored hall between two square-capped voices and the pin-curled neighbors in their doors watching all the way down to the very last door of all. Where that double-crossing Vi stood wringing her hands because everything in the world happened to her even when it happened to somebody else.

‘All night she been wheelin’, back ’n fort’, back ’n fort’,’ someone complained, ‘I couldn’t get a wink, but I know what troubles she’s had so I let her be, I’m not the kind to make trouble for others, I’ve had too much myself.’

Then Violet’s compassionate voice, telling the neighbors just how everything had happened. ‘Them two, him ’n her, wantin’ to love each other just ever so long. Wantin’ so much ’n never knowin’ how, neither one of ’em.’

Sophie felt the Division Street wind slap her cheek and the winter air nip at her throat – it had been so long since she’d been in the open. Then the air came close and stuffy, houses and store fronts and people were passing in great dips exactly as though she were riding the roller coaster once more. And laughing softly to herself at such a pleasant surprise, felt herself coasting right down into some whitewashed hall toward a cornerless room.

In the city’s cornerless heart.

Little dull red lights burning all in a row and the terrible odor of insanity, yellow and cloying, forever just one door down, almost underfoot and just overhead and following softly forever like a moving pall in the disinfected, bought-and-measured air. Seeping out from behind some whitewashed door where, so remote, so lost to all, some lost one sang in a young girl’s voice, like a voice circling endlessly on a lopsided merry-go-round.

‘I feel so gay

In a melancholy way

That it might as well be spring…’

While Somebody nearer at hand kept asking faraway questions of Someone who’d rather laugh than answer a sensible word.

Someone who kept turning her head so daintily instead of answering like she should. Till Somebody took her arm and everyone pretended to be a little sad, going down the hall all together without touching the floor at all till they came to a certain numbered door where nobody had a key.

‘We’re all locked out,’ Sophie told them solemnly, and they laughed, though why that was so funny nobody knew.