‘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.’
Antek paused to go for a small one from the bottle himself, then set the bottle down with a certain decision; the drink had convinced him it was time to wise the dealer up all the way.
‘God knows it wasn’t him rolled Louie, Frankie.’ For a moment Antek looked like a man caught rolling a corpse himself.
‘I had a good hunch it wasn’t all along,’ Frankie decided, things coming clearer at last. ‘I get it now. Pig had to frame the punk that night with the package to save his own hide. Bednar guessed that the punk was the one guy who could give him the straight story on Louie and he guessed right.’
‘It was a dirty one awright,’ Owner agreed, ‘puttin’ Pig on the payroll to get the punk.’ Antek looked white about the mouth. ‘You can see the spot I was in, Frankie, just to keep my nose clean – but don’t think we’re blamin’ you. You done what you had to do, it wasn’t just one guy’s fault. We all got caught in it one way or another.’
Frankie got his shot down. ‘It’s hard to tell whose fault a thing like that is,’ he told Antek. ‘There’s so many things seem like they’re all my dirty fault, I don’t know just why.Even the punk got plenty to blame me for now, I wanted to jam him up – but I didn’t want to jam him so’s he couldn’t get out, ever. Seems like everyone I get close to ends in the vise – what’s the score on Zosh?’
If Antek had looked white before, he looked as red as the label on the bottle now; yet came up with the answer straight enough. Somebody had to say it. ‘Your Zosh is one sick chick, Frankie. She flipped her wig the Sunday you left, right up there in the hall. My Mrs went to see her once when she was at County ’n Vi goes to see her too. Only she ain’t at County no more. She’s at the end of the Irving Park line ’n it ain’t your fault there neither, like you’re thinkin’ it is awready.’
&
nbsp; As though he had known it secretly, without acknowledging it to himself, Frankie just stood looking down at the bottle. ‘How’s Vi doin’?’ he asked at last. Just to ask something and be on his way.
Antek’s voice was relieved that Frankie had changed the subject. ‘You’d never recognize that woman, Frankie. All squared up. “Lips that touch liquor will never touch mine” is her motto these days,’ n she’s got the Jailer off the bottle too. It’s just about half my rent gone to hell there, between the two of them. You know she’s hooked up with the Jailer legal?’ N all they do is count their money? Schwabatski moved her into his own flat ’n his dimwit is goin’ to a school fer tardy children, somethin’ like that. Even that broken-wind hound is off the lush, Frankie.’ For a moment Antek looked torn between tears and laughter. ‘You should just see the four of ’em goin’ down Division Saturday nights, the dummy with a big new picture book all about flowers under his arm, leadin’ the hound with a new dog collar ’n all brushed ’n combed – you wouldn’t even recognize the hound. He goes for milk ’n dog biscuit now ’n brings home the newspaper instead of a bottle in his teeth.’
‘Where they goin’ down Division on Saturday nights if they don’t go by whisky taverns?’ Frankie asked suspiciously.
‘Oh, they’re handin’ out literature on Milwaukee ’n Ashland, all about guardin’ an old lighthouse, somethin’ like that, they’re in a tailspin on some religious kick. That loose board we used to razz the Jailer about ain’t never gonna get fixed now, looks like, unless the dummy gets smart enough in that school to fix it hisself. Looks like the loose board is in the Jailer’s head these days.’
‘He could do worse than Vi,’ Frankie felt, slapping his checkered cap on the back of his head.
Antek held him one moment.
‘Stay out of sight till after elections, Frankie. They’ll have to get the punk into a jacket by then, he can’t keep on gettin’ continuances ’n once he’s on his way you’ll be cooler. You won’t have to be afraid of no one-to-twenty rap if you can stick it out till November. You’ll beat the rap altogether if you can get a grand together. Zygmunt’s beat tougher raps than yours for less. I’d pitch in a c-note myself ’n the other boys’d come along. Even Schwiefka’d have to pitch in the way we’d put it to him. We’ll hold a raffle every night here to get the clout together for you. How much you need right now?’
‘Slip me five to keep me alive,’ Frankie singsonged. And as he took it heard Antek add in an embarrassed undertone, ‘Lay off that happy gas, Frankie. If you can beat that we’ll beat Bednar. Is it a deal?’
‘It’s a deal.’ Frankie gave him the grin and the grip. Such deals are so easily made.
With the fiver in his pocket he let Antek scout the street both ways for him before he took off. ‘If you can stick it till November-’ Antek was beginning all over again.
At the corner a whole billboard, taken up by the features of the man behind Record Head Bednar, begged shamelessly in five-foot letters:
VOTE FOR UNCLE MIKE
‘I’ll vote for you, Uncle dear,’ Frankie assured him and reminded himself, of both the weather and the place: ‘The patch is pretty warm for March.’
As he passed the iron-fenced yard of the Mc Andrew School he paused to watch a group of punks shooting craps in a shadowy corner: the identical corner in which he’d been caught shooting craps on his last day of school. He walked on with the children’s cries rising above the traffic’s clamor like voices heard undersea: then realized he wasn’t hearing the children who shouted and cried out on this day at all, he was hearing cries that had followed him out of the schoolyard twenty years past and he shuffled on, the checkered cap shading his eyes and the threads, from where his overseas stripes had been torn off, hanging loose from the jacket’s patched sleeve.
He turned down a familiar alley, crossed a familiar street, caught a familiar trolley and, where the Ashland Avenue car rolls down Paulina toward Madison, returned to the streets of his exile. Overhead ran the Lake Street El and underneath its checkered light the Negro missions crouched. Missions, taverns and bazaars in long unpainted rows. He cut down the home alley to Maypole Street.
As his hand touched the knob he sensed trouble. Molly sat on the couch, her back against the wall and her legs drawn up protectively under her. Drunkie John was leaning over her.
‘Don’t kick me,’ Frankie heard her begging. ‘Don’t kick me.’ A plea as simple as that. Of a man with a face that belonged on the bottle on the table. John wore some sort of leather headgear, a boy’s helmet with chin straps dangling; apparently his latest fancy was that he was some kind of aviator. The face it framed, as it turned toward Frankie, was seared to a purplish red on one side and sunken and pale on the other, giving it a paralytic look; a look borne out by his old trick of speaking, without any movement of the lips at all, from the unseared corner of the mouth. ‘All in a muddle, like a whore’s handbag,’ he was saying, holding Molly’s purse in his hand. ‘She thinks I drink too much,’ John told Frankie; but put the purse down. Frankie pushed him toward the door.
‘All in a muddle,’ John laughed quietly even while he went stumbling and came up against the wall with a sly and sheepish little smile. ‘The joke’s on you,’ he told Frankie, ‘I’m not as drunk as you think.’
‘You’ve done a damned good job of trying,’ Frankie told him.
‘I ain’t really drunk till I stagger around,’ John defended his condition with anxious pride. ‘One glass of beer all morning ’n I spit that one out, it tasted green.’
‘Some of it must of trickled down,’ Frankie suggested, and turned to Molly. ‘You all right, Molly-O?’
‘Make him go, Frankie. Tell him we can’t give him no more.’
Frankie relayed the information. ‘We can’t give you no more.’
‘She’ll give it or get it,’ John answered, staying close to the open door.
‘Don’t hit him, Frankie,’ Molly cautioned, ‘don’t make him mad.’
It was true. Nobody could afford to make this amateur airline pilot angry. So Frankie just stood studying that debauched phiz with its out-thrust jaw and eyes as closely set as those of a baby alligator’s. All he could see there, for the life of him, was a little knock-kneed gin-mill fink held together by a kind of poolroom poise. ‘He’s good with a cue too,’ went through Frankie’s mind. ‘Case out, lush,’ he told John without touching him at all. ‘I’m the big dog in this kennel now.’
‘You caught the right word for it at that, junkie,’ John told him, taking sudden courage. But was half through the door before he reproached Molly: ‘I took two jolts in the workie when you’n me was together ’n you never took one. Not one. But your turn is comin’ up, sister. This McGantic man, he’s gonna fall a long way ’n you’re gonna fall right with him. I took two jolts ’n you didn’t take one. Not one.’ They heard him leave.
Frankie closed the door softly, hoping the housekeeper hadn’t heard the row. ‘Now what?’ he asked Molly-O.
The door opened behind him and Drunkie John stuck his mug back in.
‘The bottle, buddy – the bottle.’
Frankie took a long slug out of it, tossed it to John and heard him go at last.
‘That one won’t lose much time,’ Molly-O told him as if he didn’t know.
‘I’ll make it myself now,’ he pretended, yet with real fear that she might let him try going it alone. When she came to him he felt her trembling. ‘Don’t worry, he won’t be comin’ back, you can stop shakin’,’ he assured her.
‘It ain’t why I’m shakin’,’ she told him. ‘It’s account of what you said, makin’ it yourself now. How about me? What if I can’t make it myself?’
‘You’ll fall if you stick to me now,’ Frankie warned her.
‘I’d rather fall with you than make it without you, Frankie.’ He held her head on his shoulder and knew this was finally true too: it wasn’t just himself needing her any longer, it wasn’t just taking without any giving. It was nearer fifty-fi
fty now and that felt better than he’d ever known a thing like that could be. ‘I couldn’t make it a week by myself,’ he confessed, ‘’n you know it. I’d be back sleigh-ridin’ in two days without you, Molly-O. If I had to steal to get it.’
‘Then let’s not lose each other again,’ she decided for keeps. ‘I’ll get work in a South Side joint ’n we’ll take care of each other. Just us two.’
‘Workin’ in a South Side joint ain’t playin’ it safe at all, Molly,’ he had to remind her as she had so often reminded him. ‘They’ll be lookin’ for me through you. You can’t stay in the strip racket or the man with the manacles’ll come to take us both.’
‘Okay – so I’m a waitress – look!’ She pranced about bearing an imaginary tray. He caught her and brought her back to the business at hand. ‘You’ll be a waitress at Dwight if you don’t start gettin’ your things together. Let’s case.’
He stuffed his pockets with cigarettes, toothbrush, shaving cream, a razor and a couple blades. ‘Just like I’m takin’ my rations down to the Rue Pigalle,’ he laughed reminiscently while she put on her very best shoes – the little silver-heeled open-toed jobs – and filled a small brown five-and-dime overnight bag with underclothing, nylons and her one best dress. He caught her looking lonesomely toward the closet where other dresses hung. ‘No help for it, Molly-O. We got to travel light.’
‘It ain’t only that,’ she mourned. ‘I got six days’ pay comin’ from the club – how about that?’
‘Forget it. I loaned a fiver off Antek this morning, it’ll get us a room for a day or two. Out the back way, Molly-O. The patch is hot.’
The patch was hot all right. The patch was burning. They were halfway down the narrow gangway to the alley when he heard the tires wheel into the alley. She’d played waitress ten seconds too long. ‘Back in the house,’ he told her.
But in a white fear she clung to him, her hand pressing him hard against the wall. He wheeled her about by her shoulders and shoved her hard. ‘Stall them.’
The Man with the Golden Arm Page 42
