Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

‘There ain’t a safe job for you in this town, Drummer.’

‘I’ll drive a cab then. Hack all day ’n get a drum job nights.’

‘They’ll print you the first day ’n fire you the second ’n here comes the man on the third.’ She crossed her wrists to indicate the man from the law.

‘I’ll hustle freight by Kinzie Street.’

‘They’ll print you.’

‘I’ll drive a truck. I’ll go to work in a factory. I’ll get a mill job in Gary.’

‘They’ll print you.’

‘We’ll case out of town then.’

‘We can’t blow town on nothin’, Frankie.’

She never mentioned Drunkie John.

Yet, when she tried telling him she’d lost ten dollars of her pay playing twenty-six, he asked her simply: ‘You mean John is cuttin’ in again?’

‘He wants me to come back to him.’

‘Why lie?’ Frankie wanted to know. ‘You know as well as I do John don’t want you or any woman. You’re payin’ him ’cause he’s found out I’m sleepin’ here ’n he’s promised to button up. Why not just say it straight, Molly-O?’

‘I didn’t see what good makin’ things worse for you’d do,’ she confessed miserably. ‘Just when you’re startin’ to get back on your feet, lookin’ like you used to look the night we went dancin’.’ Suddenly she dropped the past and all its broken promises. ‘I’m afraid not to give him the money, Frankie.’

‘What good is any lush’s promise?’ he asked her. He was lying stretched out on the army cot and she sat on its edge with her hand holding the hair back out of his eyes. ‘You can’t keep payin’ him off all your life, Molly-O.’

‘I got to cut your hair tonight,’ she told him, and put a finger to his lips. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t waitin’ for me when I come back at night.’

‘You’d be back on the lush yourself,’ he told her truthfully. And saw how the past months had tired her. She was twenty-four and looked thirty, with a sort of unsatisfied compassion in her eyes he had never seen before. It made him want to fathom the dark well of her love. ‘What makes you take care of a no-good guy like me, Molly-O?’ was the only way he had of putting it.

She laughed a pleased little laugh, shrugged and told him, ‘I don’t know, Frankie. Some cats just swing like that.’

But her face looked careworn.

A short, cold spring. By morning a musk-colored murmuring drifted down from all the flats above and the amber afternoons passed with music-making: a snatch of rhythm by the door, shouts from porch to porch and laughter rocking down the stairs. Till all the weekday morning murmurs, all the back-porch calls and all the laughter on the stairs mounted to a single Saturday night shout, when the whole house shook with Negro roistering. To the din above his head Frankie would tap away on his practice board though hardly able to hear the radio’s beat for the slap and slam, the shambling and the clattering of heavy feet, right overhead all night long.

He slept on the army cot and Molly on a couch which served, by day, as his orchestra pit. On nights when his single blanket wasn’t enough to keep him warm she took him beside her on the couch and kept him warm till morning.

A listless sort of light seeped in, toward noon ice would be melting down the windows. He kept the little fuel-oil stove going most of the day but shut it off, for economy’s sake, as soon as the nights began growing a bit less cold. At noon they used it for heating coffee or a can of soup or beans. The only sink was out in the hall, it was there she washed the plates and forks; she felt it unsafe for him to be seen in the hall. Sometimes one of the Negro women came out of her own private cavern with a couple cracked plates and a handful of tarnished silver to say ‘Good morning, ma’am,’ and share the sink. Molly kept such conversations down to the barest formalities.

As his restlessness grew he took to sneaking out for round-the-block walks while she slept. When she wakened she would see the mud on his shoes and would realize he couldn’t be pent up much longer. Once, when he returned smelling like a brewery, she became the outraged mother, locked him in and wouldn’t take him for their evening walk between shows by way of punishment. ‘Remember that the first time you’re picked up for drunk ’n disorderly you’re on your way to where you won’t come back,’ she scolded him. ‘Why do you take such chances, hon?’ His face lighted up with that half-malicious little grin. ‘Some cats just swing like that, Molly-O.’

He knew. He knew, yet each day wandered nearer the haunts of home. He had to get to someone who knew the score on the punk before he could make another move. He had to get it off his mind and thought of walking straight up Schwabatski’s steps and asking for Vi.

On the first warm day of March, while Molly was washing dishes in the common sink, he took off without a word, but she saw him leaving and called to him.

‘I’m just gonna look around, the places where the people are,’ he reported over his shoulder.

‘When you get enough of them on your tail run the other way,’ she offered her final warning.

On Damen and Division he spotted Meter Reader, empty-eyed and empty-handed, and ducked him; he didn’t want to hear how proud Meter Reader was of his boys. Instead he slipped around to Antek the Owner’s side door and waited just inside the door till Antek motioned him toward the back room and followed Frankie there. Antek’s short-haired wife nodded to Frankie sullenly and went up to take care of the bar while Antek filled two shot glasses and drank off his own before looking straight at Frankie.

‘You’re hotter than ever, Dealer,’ Antek told him at last, ‘you won’t cool off till after the elections. They got out another handbill about “Alderman’s Sluggers Go Free in Strongarm Murder,” somethin’ like that. What I know is the super is gonna lose his job if Record Head don’t clear the books on Louie. They’re pertendin’ now that somebody got paid off to slug Louie ’n you’re the guy Bednar needs to clear hisself.’

‘Skip the politics, Owner,’ Frankie cut him short. ‘What’s the score on the punk?’

‘It’s the punk who’s in the crack, Dealer. That’s for sure. Bednar got him thinkin’ he can beat the rap if he plays along. He’s had two continuances ’n he’s out stealin’ everythin’ in sight to pay off the lawyers. They don’t want him in a jacket till after he’s fingered you, so the aces got him out stealin’ everythin’ layin’ loose, they know what’s layin’ loose ’n it’s up to him to snatch it ’n turn it over. Every time he tries to holler about somethin’ they got lined up for him, they got to go through it all over again for him, how one more conviction adds up to life ’n no parole -’ n all the time they’re gettin’ so much on him he can’t say no. They got enough on him now to hang him – but what’s the punk gonna do? Either he goes along or he’s gone for keeps.’

‘Don’t he know he’s gone for keeps anyhow?’ Frankie felt a cold disgust with everyone. ‘Don’t he know the day he crosses me in court like he’s promisin’ Bednar, Bednar’s gonna cross him the day after?’

‘The punk just can’t figure it that far, Frankie,’ Antek tried to soften Frankie, ‘ nobody can figure that far. A guy got to hope, it’s all the punk got left now is hopin’. He thinks they’ll cut down his time if he plays along ’n that’s all he can think of. He can’t back up now, he got to keep goin’ no matter what’s at the end for him ’r you ’r anybody. The day they fixed his bond he come in here ’n tells me, “I won’t do more’n a year ’n a day, Owner. I got the captain’s word. Then I’ll make the street like a little woolly lamb.” ’N he looked that sick when he said it I had to pour him two on the house. He looked that sick when he said it, you’ll never know how sick. Trouble is he’s spendin’ more than they let him keep. He don’t bother pourin’ the stuff into shot glasses no more – he goes right for the bottle, like he thinks it’s the last one he’ll get his hands on all his life.’