Hop Alley

by Scott Phillips

  “My helper’s busted his arm.” I myself wouldn’t have brought any medical problem as challenging as the previous patient’s enlarged nose to Stickhammer, but he’d do for setting a broken arm.

  The light of day shining through the window of the room showed to better advantage the discolored, traumatized flesh that extended from shoulder to elbow. The arm was scarred with old wounds as well, more or less healed, including what looked like a bad burn at the shoulder, and I hated to think what the rest of him looked like uncovered. “Sweet Christ almighty.” Stickhammer looked up at me. “You didn’t do this to him, did you?”

  “Hell, no. His old man did it.”

  “He did, eh? How old are you, lad?”

  “Eighteen,” Lemuel said after a moment’s thought, surprising the doctor and me both. I’d have taken him for thirteen or so.

  “And why’d the old boy find it necessary to crack your arm this way?”

  “Got the farts pretty awful and couldn’t quit.”

  Stickhammer nodded, as though that were a common cause of such injuries. “All right, let’s get this old shirt off of you, boy.”

  At that I turned to leave. “How much to set it, Ernie?”

  “Two-fifty,” he said, and, smarting a bit myself, I left two silver dollars and a half on his desk and told the boy to come back over when he was all done. As I descended the front staircase I winced at the sound of the boy crying out in pain at the shirt’s removal.

  A ROAST CHICKEN was ready when I returned to the studio, and by the time Mrs. Fenster and I had done eating the boy had returned with his newly splinted arm in a canvas sling, the empty sleeve of his ragged shirt hanging, slit in half, at his side.

  “Pay you back,” he said as he started eating, though we all knew he couldn’t reasonably do so any time soon.

  “You can work it off,” I said. “It’s a good thing he busted the left and not the right.”

  He gaped at me, slack-jawed, then down at his arm as though trying to remember what had happened to it, then back up at me. “Can’t work. Arm’s broke.”

  “That’s why nature gave you two of them. There’s plenty of one-armed men my age who’ve been working for a living since the war.”

  He nodded, not understanding my point but eager to please.

  “All right, then, why don’t you start preparing the plates for the one o’clock sitting,” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, and he started for the darkroom, very slowly.

  “Did Stickhammer give you something for that pain?” I asked, suddenly afraid I would have to do all the afternoon’s work myself after all.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Did he give you a drink to make the hurting stop?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said in a somnambulist’s molasses-thick murmur. I should have thought to tell Stickhammer not to dope him up, but I hadn’t, and for my neglect I found myself saddled with a one-armed, opiated imbecile for a helper.

  I had to assist him with all his tasks that afternoon, right down to mixing up the collodion, and by day’s end I despaired of his ever relearning the work one-handed. At the end of the day Mrs. Fenster called me aside.

  “Where’s the boy to stay tonight?” she asked.

  “At home,” I said, seeing no reason he shouldn’t, as long as he wasn’t farting.

  “At home with that man what did that to him?” she said. “No thank you, Mr. Sadlaw. Here’s the place for him. I’ll fix him up a bed in the studio and unmake it first thing in the morning. You won’t even know he’s here.”

  “Because he won’t be.” I got quite enough of Lemuel in the daytime, and the truth was that Mrs. Fenster was one too many members of my household already.

  “He’ll stay for the time being. Till I can get something else arranged.”

  Her impertinence was as unusual as the concern she showed the boy, who most days annoyed her more than he did me, and I was so surprised I acquiesced. She set about preparing a makeshift bed for him in the studio on the canapé. He stared at the bed, transfixed, nodding slightly as she explained to him the overnight rules of the house, rules she was making up as she did so, as none of them applied to me or her. He was still contemplating the bed with a long strand of drool hanging from his lower lip and a dullness to his eye when I left them.

  THE STRAINS OF the afternoon’s unassisted labors called for release. My back and shoulders were as stiff and sore as if I had spent the day hammering railroad spikes, and my anger and frustration, with no legitimate target but a half-crippled idiot, were ready to overflow. I stepped out onto the street with no precise idea of where I would end the evening, but when I chose a direction it was toward the stables on the street behind. I knew what it would take to restore my peace of mind, at least for the night.

  AS I HAD on several previous occasions stepping up to Priscilla’s front door, I spied one of her neighbors scowling through her front parlor window at me. She was young and rather pretty, and on several occasions I had seen her with children of varying ages. Her expression was so vituperative I laughed out loud, and if not for the pane of glass between us she might have spat at me. She looked like she did it often enough to be good at it, and might have hit me even at that distance.

  When the door opened Priscilla eyed me with only slightly more friendliness than her neighbor. It was well past the hour at which she stopped accepting unannounced callers, but I hoped she might break her rule this once. “Look what the wind blew over,” she said.

  “I wondered if you might be free to dine with me,” I said.

  “I’ve already eaten, like any normal person has by this hour. Why don’t you come in, anyhow.”

  As we lay there a while later, she said, “Someone told me you and Ralph dined together. So you needn’t worry about concealing it.”

  For a moment I wondered if her informant was the waiter, but he had overheard the entire exchange, and if he were betraying confidences he surely wouldn’t have stopped there. “That’s true,” I said, feeling a little glum and disloyal for not revealing to her the nature of my conversation with Banbury. The opportunities open to a woman her age weren’t many or attractive, and the odds of finding another patron as generous as Banbury were slim, regardless of her beauty or the advanced level of her intimate skills; youth was generally the chief attribute a rich old buzzard wanted hanging from his arm, even when its possessor was only halfway to pretty. Priscilla had been a dressmaker back in Iowa, though, and I supposed she might still make a living at that somewhere.

  “I hope you weren’t negotiating for my favors without my participation,” she said, rolling slightly toward me to afford a better view of her lovely sex, its labia dark and glistening, a microscopically thin strand of semen suspended delicately across the hairy canopy just above it. The faint odor of recent copulation intoxicated me at that moment like morphine; there wasn’t much I would have refused her then, and I hoped she wouldn’t press for too many details. “We talked about you only in context of your grace and beauty.”

  She laughed and was quiet for a moment as she rolled back against the mattress and rolled toward me, noting my gaze fixed on l’origine du monde. “And how are you faring, Mr. Sadlaw, generally?”

  “I’m too busy lately, having as I do only half an assistant.” I described to her the circumstances of Lemuel’s injury, to her anger and indignation. I reminded her that she didn’t even know the boy, which placated her not at all.

  She rose up and leaned on her arm so that her breasts hung down slantways, their nipples still rosy and swollen. “Charges should be brought.”

  “I don’t know that they could, under the circumstances. I guess a father’s got the right to punish his own son. Anyway, I don’t know that the boy’d testify against his pa like that.”

  “Then you should do it. He’s your employee, after all, and your trade will suffer for it. Surely the police would understand that. Ralph has plenty of contacts among the police.”

  I just nodded. Her r
ighteous vehemence aroused me, and her too, judging by the ardor with which she responded to the pressure of my lips against hers. Soon I was astride her again, and this one was so long in extinguishing itself that I asked to stay the night, which I’d never done there before; she turned me down flat, for the sake of the neighbors, who might think the less of her for it.

  THREE

  CUT DOWN BY A LADY

  After my father’s suicide one of my well-intentioned but busy uncles thought to distract me from my bewildered grief with a dog. I named her Ginger, though her coat was salt-and-pepper, after a dog my father and I had both been fond of. I remembered being sent out into the lady’s garden to play with that first Ginger many an afternoon while my father and the dog’s mistress, Mrs. Merryvale, discussed spiritual matters inside the house.

  My own Ginger was a mutt whose previous owner had died. As a result of his regularly administered beatings she was slightly lame and terrified of all adult males and many females as well, and though eventually she grew less skittish she only really ever trusted children. Though she never mastered any of the rudiments of canine dressage she was so sweet-natured and eager for affection that no one much cared about her failures in deportment, and she was well-loved by the neighborhood boys and girls, many of whom associated with the son of a suicide only because of her. Working with the idiot I was sometimes reminded of Ginger; it was as easy to forgive him cracking an exposed plate as it was to pardon her urinating in the parlor when we forgot to let her out (for she never learned that a bark would grant her egress). There was the same look in the eye of abject sorrow and culpability, of the certainty of swift and terrible punishment, of grateful astonishment when it didn’t come. If I hadn’t come to like him, precisely, I tolerated his presence well enough and had stopped contemplating his replacement with a more useful helper.

  AFTER A FEW days Lem was able to perform most of his tasks without the aid of his useless left arm but they went slowly, and when we were rushed I had to help him. He complained hardly at all about the hurt in his arm and generally spoke even less than he normally did. He continued to sleep in the studio, and I made no effort to find him new lodgings. Sleeping there he was able to start his workday earlier, which compensated slightly for his slowness, and I was scarcely aware of his presence anyway.

  It occurred to me that since he no longer had to turn over his wages to his tyrant of a father, and had no living expenses to speak of, he must have been socking some money away, and I asked him about it one afternoon as we stocked the darkroom, and he answered without hesitation or shame.

  “I squirrel some away. Some I spend, now’s I got it.”

  “What do you have to spend it on, with free meals and a roof over your head?”

  “Hoors, Mr. Sadlaw. I go down to one of the fancy houses yonder on Market Street.”

  I burst out laughing, which puzzled him.

  “Didn’t want to bring ’em here,” he said, helpfully. “Wouldn’t want to screw on the couch, there, where people get their picture made. And my auntie wouldn’t like it much, I don’t guess.”

  I began to suspect that some of that salary was also going toward the purchase of morphine injections from Dr. Stickhammer, who seemed very well-informed regarding Lemuel’s progress despite the fact that I had not taken him back in since the day the arm was set. The boy was so addled under normal circumstances that it was hard to tell from his speech and demeanor whether he was hopped up or not, but frequently after his midday meal break—which he no longer took with Mrs. Fenster and me—he returned to the studio with his pupils dilated and his manner especially dreamy and contented. I thought of trying to curtail it but it didn’t seem right; soon enough, I reasoned, the arm would be healed and he could quit the stuff.

  His unskilled duties had increased as his ability to perform his few skilled ones had diminished, and these now included fetching the morning newspapers for breakfast. One Monday morning as his aunt toiled in the kitchen he laid the Bulletin, the Daily Times, the Call, the Tribune, and the Rocky Mountain News down on the breakfast table. Neither of us said anything, and I was well into the Bulletin when he retreated into the kitchen for a word with Mrs. Fenster. I might have warned him that she was in an unusually foul temper that day, but I was absorbed by the news of the day and anyway didn’t much care what the old termagant did to him. I was examining the advertisements on the third page when the boy exited the kitchen and stood next to me for half a minute, saying nothing.

  “Are you lacking in work to do today?” I asked. “Because if so, I can think of a dozen jobs that need starting.”

  “No, sir. Could you read me something from out of there?”

  Taken aback, I asked what he wanted to learn about.

  “Anything in there about a man got shot in front of a saloon yesterday?”

  The article was on the front page, and I began reading it:

  CUT DOWN BY A LADY

  HIS ASSAILANT’S IDENTITY

  YET TO BE DISCOVERED.

  The Bulletin’s Own Pressman—

  A Model Employee for Three Years—

  Devoted Husband and Father of Four—

  He Is Not Expected to Last the Day.

  At about eleven o’clock last night Hiram Cowan, a printing press operator for the Bulletin, stepped out of the Silver Star Saloon near our offices, at whose door he was met by either one woman or two, depending upon the witness telling the tale, and shot through the abdomen with a small pistol. Mr. Cowan fell to the ground, whereupon his assailant or assailants fled into the darkness. Although the finest in medical care has been provided for him he is not expected to see the sun set again.

  Members of the Denver Police expressed confidence that an arrest of the murderer can be made by this afternoon at the latest, and that with luck the victim will live sufficiently long to identify his killer.

  I put the paper down and found that the boy wasn’t listening. His gaze was fixed at the ground, and his left foot skidded back and forth in a slow rhythm. He looked as close to thoughtful as I had ever seen him.

  “That mean he’s dead or ain’t?”

  “Sounds like he’s going to be, soon enough. Did you see it happen?”

  He looked up at me, his breath whistling softly through his half-open mouth. “Nuh-uh.”

  “What’s your interest, then?”

  “That’s my old man.”

  I glanced at the article again. I had failed to recognize the father’s name, I realized, because I’d never bothered to learn the boy’s surname. I was surprised to learn that his father was employed, since I’d been under the impression that Lemuel was the family’s sole source of income, and I said so.

  “I mostly am, since he don’t bring much home with him.”

  He didn’t look very sad about his old pa’s impending demise. “Do you want to go and see him?”

  He shook his head no. “Not particular.”

  BETWEEN THE PRIVY and the stable the odor in the summertime was faint-making, but on this chilly afternoon the ammoniac smell that wafted upward was ever present but faint, more like the memory of the stench than the thing itself. The sensation was almost pleasant, calling to mind long-ago Ohio mornings puzzling apart the most rudimentary of the classical texts before the curiosity-killing drudgery of the school day began.

  Now I sat browsing through the Rocky Mountain News in the angular light that leaked down through the cracks between the rough pine boards of the shabbily constructed outhouse around that time of day. When I had finished I put the paper into the rack I had fashioned for storage of reading materials and pulled from it that morning’s already perused Bulletin, whose front page, with its account of the shooting of Lem’s Pa, I tore into strips and rendered illegible.

  My schedule for the afternoon was clear of obligations and appointments, and my plans vague. I didn’t relish the thought of languishing in the gallery, ordering the boy about and waiting for clients who likely would never materialize, but I hated the thought of
missing any who might unexpectedly wander in. I stepped out squinting into the last white light the courtyard would receive that day, and my thoughts went straight to the prints languorously revealing themselves on the rooftop: a sweet elderly lady brought in by her granddaughter for her first photograph, shriveled as a dried-out apple and peering into the lens as though into Satan’s eyeball with an expression wholly unlike the kindly one she’d worn upon entry; a glum lad of sixteen or so trying to make himself out as a dandy, who had required assistance in knotting his silk cravat and in combing his shaggy hair into a poet’s wild mane; and finally one of the broomstick madam’s young ladies, who had come in with her patroness wanting to have a portrait made for the parents of a young client who had taken a strong liking to and wanted to marry her, one that would make her look like a lady. As I began to ascend I looked upward to find Lemuel peering anxiously down at me from the edge of the rooftop, and I assumed he was waiting for his turn to go down and void his bladder.

  “Hold your horses, I’ll be up in a moment,” I told him, but when I reached the top he didn’t take the ladder.

  “A man brought a box by and he’s waiting to be paid.” This simple turn of events completely stymied him, and the thought of paying the man from the cashbox never entered his inch-thick blond skull. I took a moment to check on the progress of the prints, which to my satisfaction were about exactly far along as I’d calculated, then climbed down the other ladder into the foyer and found a very angry messenger waiting on the piano bench. He was the size of a stevedore and spoke like a fallen schoolmaster.

  “I hope your bowel enjoyed a satisfactory evacuation,” he said, “having cost me as it did goddamn near a quarter of an hour.” An enormous moustache like a horse brush covered his mouth completely, and just above and below it on the left side could be seen the ends of a gruesome scar the lip cover was doubtless meant to hide. Like Lemuel he had only one useful arm, his left; the right was lost entirely. Idly I pondered whether its severing had been concurrent to receiving the scar on his mouth, and I ignored his insolent tone in favor of providing the boy with a valuable lesson.