A Walk On The Wild Side

by Nelson Algren

  Both women stood looking down. Hallie herself didn’t know what to do with the fellow.

  As Navy finally opened his eyes.

  His eyes so blue, so commanding.

  ‘That was the nicest party I’ve had in twelve years,’ he congratulated everyone.

  Mama lowered herself in all her finery, onto a divan and sighed, just sighed.

  ‘Bring me the evening paper,’ she asked after a while, ‘I want to see what the white folks are up to.’

  The figure, the face and the gleaming braid of the madman who had spent a month’s pay in a night dimmed swiftly. His money long spent, nobody cared what had become of the Lieutenant-in-Command.

  ‘I wonder,’ Mama grew suspicious later, ‘whether that officer told us the entire truth.’

  ‘So far as he knew it,’ Hallie took a guess.

  ‘You figure he left out a little something or other?’

  ‘Black Mammy wasn’t as simple as he likes to think. I think she had lapped the field.’

  ‘I don’t follow your meaning.’

  ‘Why, I think from the day she paddled that little boy, she knew what kind of material she was working with. I think whether that little boy became a man or stayed a little boy was entirely up to her. She had a choice between herself and the boy, and she chose against the boy. That was the only way she had of not one day losing him to a white girl.’

  ‘I’d purely hate to believe that a common field darky could be that evil,’ Mama turned Hallie’s theory down cold.

  ‘She wasn’t a field darky. She was a house darky with scores to settle in that same house. Everything she had the white folks had taken. She saw her chance to get something back. I’ll take my oath she was getting even on somebody.’

  ‘No,’ Mama still declined to believe, ‘everybody got to love somebody and that woman wasn’t give nobody but a little white boy to love, and he wasn’t give nobody but an old black mammy. When things are like that color and age even don’t matter. In love, not even price matter. Yes, Black Mammy genuinely love that child.’

  ‘It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along,’ Hallie agreed. ‘In love price don’t matter nor which lover pays. It’s why he can’t hate her even to this day though he knows now what she did to him.’

  Though the languid lieutenant was far to sea – gone without trace never to return, his visits began a slow sea change. He had spent so freely Finnerty had been encouraged to believe there must be other such fools about, in uniform or out. Finnerty was right.

  ‘It’s the age of specialization is what it is,’ he began preaching a new faith, ‘Do you go to a eye doc to get a tooth yanked? Do you go to the ice cream parlor for stamps? New fields is opening and one is the bug field. Hundreds of bugs loaded with gold, the Depression aint even touched them, willing to pay somebody to make them happy. It don’t make a bug happy to come into a joint, point out a girl and go to bed. Nowadays he wants the bit spiced up. He wants the girl to tell him, “Do what you want with me.”’

  Perhaps too it was Finnerty’s new girl, a spare and bitter child just out of a Houston jail who had encouraged him, for she seemed not to care in the least what became of her. ‘My name is Kitty Twist,’ she had told him, ‘and I do everything.’

  Her breastless, sexless personality was no matter, Finnerty knew. For this was the kind of girl upon whom a man might recover something of which a wife or mistress had robbed him. The city was full of hatless Harrys seeking not so much love but vengeance for wrongs, real or fancied, forever imposed by women: wife, nurse, sister, daughter, mistress or aunt. Woman, there was the cause of it all.

  A traffic founded on self-pity that paid off better than the old-fashioned traffic in love. Love’s dividends came in single bills; but hatred’s comes by twenties.

  ‘It’s the new way of doing things,’ Finnerty approved.

  And the men who came buzzing in the lieutenant’s wake had the twenties. Apparently they didn’t read the papers, for they gave no sign of knowing that the country was in the very depths of an economic disaster. They were men who had been sheltered all their lives and were sheltered yet. Their world was the world of their own needs alone, and if they looked out of a window at the street below, nothing they saw, or nobody down there, had any relationship to their own safe halls.

  Brokers and buyers, efficiency experts with private means, personnel managers from banking families, men who had been born to ownership of ships or banks or mines or wells – the whole contented clan of white-collar foxes whose hearts were in their collars and their love locked in their files, who yet wanted to know of life – ‘What’s the answer?’ Without pausing once to wonder what was the question.

  ‘These are class people,’ Finnerty tried to impress his girls. ‘If one tells you to swing from the chandelier, baby, you swing.’

  ‘Why not just sell the beds and buy trapezes for the money?’ the new child wanted to know right off.

  ‘You’re always in there with the wise answer, aint you?’ Oliver warned her.

  ‘Because you’re always there with the right question, Little Daddy,’ Kitty tried quickly to soften her new daddy.

  Against the collar clan the lunch bucket brigadiers – boiler-makers, janitors, construction workers, merchant mariners, grease-monkeys, slaughter house bullies, plasterers and bricklayers didn’t stand a chance. The collars had fancied love up until the best looking and youngest of the women were out of range of the bucket boys. Why tie up a piece of merchandise for half an hour with a date smelling of fish or tar, when one smelling of nothing but after-shave lotion would pay five times as much and perhaps not even soil a towel?

  ‘Mama,’ Oliver gave out the news, ‘we’re going to forget these workin’-ass bums who don’t even know a girl has a soul. I know one pimp willing to stand on the corner waiting for a broad to turn a three-dollar trick so he can get a haircut, but I don’t call that a pimp. I got every one of my broads insured and I got a plane to keep up too. What the workin’-ass man wants he can get elsewhere. From here on out we cater strictly to the bug who wants something he’s afraid to ask his wife for – or what he’d rather not have her give. Or what she can’t give.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m following, Oliver.’

  ‘You’re following all right,’ Finnerty assured her.

  ‘Well, I don’t care for where I think you’re leading. What can any girl of ours give a man that his wife can’t?’

  ‘Virginity, woman,’ the pander almost spat the word – virginity. Else how is it that when I say to some clown – “Would you like to see the girls, mister?” he just dogeyes me and keeps on walking. But when I say, “Mister, are you interested in a girl who’s never been had?” it’s just too much for him. He slows down, thinking it over, turns the corner, comes back on the other side of the street and all I have to do is wait. He comes to me then. “What did you mean by that?” he wants to know and by the way he says it I know whether he’s the law or a bug. “I meant are you interested in witnessing a girl giving in for the first time?” Mama, you’d be astonished how almost every one will come up with a ten-spot just on a promise like that. Honest to God, some days I feel rotten about everyone but myself.’

  ‘Some days I feel rotten about you too, Oliver,’ Mama admitted.

  The little man sat clasping his stomach as though in pain. ‘What kind of a sport wouldn’t hop to a chance like we’re offering? Why, it’s like having a girl’s very soul. Love he can get at home – but the soul, the soul – Did his mother neglect him? Did his auntie seduce him? Did his mother-in-law rob him? Did his wife desert him? Did his mistress betray him – Here’s a chance to get even with them all.’

  ‘Calm yourself, Oliver,’ Mama urged him, ‘because no man is coming for no such purpose to any house of mine,’ Mama found her voice at last, ‘I’ve been an underworld woman all my days. I have faith my Lord will forgive me for that. For I’ve been straight with Him and straight with myself—’

  ‘—and straight
with your girls too, of course,’ Finnerty stopped her. His very tone stopped her. ‘Sit down, old woman. There’s something I’ve been meaning to have out with you and this is as good a time as any.’

  Mama sat down.

  ‘It’s a little matter of a bill that went into your hand a C note and came back to me as a ten-spot. If it had been any broad but the Looney I’d think maybe it was her and not you. But it’s true that the girl never actually looked at that bill – I’ve watched her take money time and again and she never looks at it, just puts it away until she sees me, then hands over the lot. So I know she gave it to you as she got it – old woman, it was you pulled the gypsy switch on your best, your only friend. Do you call that being straight for the Christian-killing Moses’s sake, old woman?’

  ‘Oliver, if I know what you’re talking about I’ll kiss your behind before God.’

  Finnerty cocked his head a bit at that. ‘You know what you just said is as strong a statement I’ve heard a Louisiana nigger make to a white man for some time?’

  ‘Oliver, it’s the truth. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Look,’ he began losing patience. ‘I whupped the broad and she said “No.” I whupped her harder and she still said “No.” Finally I took my mittens off, ready to give her the real thing. She still said “No.” Mama, I don’t want to whup you. But I know it wasn’t the broad. I know it was you.’

  Mama could scarcely bear the injustice of this. ‘For God’s sake, boy. What makes you so sure it wasn’t the mark who switched on you?’

  Finnerty smiled thinly. ‘I was wondering how long it was going to take you to come up with that. It don’t go, old woman. I never took eye off that bill from the moment I put it in the mark’s pocket.’

  ‘Were you in the room when he gave it to the girl?’

  ‘As good as. I had my eye to the hole.’

  ‘How could you see the number on the bill through a keyhole?’

  The shadow of a doubt passed across the pander’s mind – but he recalled the sheer simplicity of Dove’s face and the shadow passed. It just couldn’t be. For that redheaded country boy hadn’t been just an ordinary mark. He had been a mark’s mark, the kind a man might wait a lifetime to meet, so simple it was pathetic.

  ‘Anyone but him, Mama,’ he told her – then suddenly realizing how very near she had come to throwing him off the track he made up his mind twice as firmly as before – ‘Mama, I’m going to hear from your own lips that it was you who switched on me and nobody but you.’

  Mama knew that tone and could only sit shaking her head miserably, ‘No. No. Let me die the worst death there is if I took it.’

  Finnerty rose.

  ‘Oliver, I know what you’re going to do. But I just can’t fix my mouth to say what you want me to.’

  Finnerty pulled on a single mitten. He drew the cloth down tight over each separate finger. When every wrinkle had been smoothed he turned his wrist slowly to test its hinge. Then he drew on the other glove.

  ‘Yes,’ Mama told him. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’

  ‘I knew you done it all the time,’ Finnerty said, ‘and I’m not billing you for it. But never let me hear you say again that you play it straight. Not to me you don’t say it. Here.’

  He poured her a cognac and offered it full to the brim without a spilling a drop. But Mama’s hand shook so when she took it he had to help her to bring it to her lips. When it was empty she held it out for more. He filled it again. This time she drank more steadily. And still she wanted more.

  ‘If I can save one sparrow a single misstep,’ she began.

  ‘That’ll do for now, old woman,’ Finnerty told her, ‘I’ve got work to do and so have you.’

  And left to study his mouse.

  What passed for the Wrath To Come on the walk and what passed for the Wrath inside the parlor were hells an earth apart. Though that amateur savior warned the women of the middle-pits of Hell, the women themselves felt sure that the pits were reserved exclusively for finks. Certainly no reasonable God would hold a grudge against a girl for earning her bread by the sweat of the sex with which He had blessed her. But to save one’s own skin by crying off on a sister – no God worth the name would overlook as lousy a trick as that.

  Beside, God must be on their side because He was on Mama’s. And wasn’t Mama forever bringing home moulting canaries or bargain goldfish because she felt sorry for them? Didn’t she say almost every day, ‘If I can save one sparrow a single misstep it makes my own missteps worthwhile?’

  Long after midnight old lonely trains called up to Mama like lovers forever arriving too late for love. Up from the long grieving river they called, past track and tower and dock, to windows long darkened and doorways long locked; old beaux that had walked Perdido Street long ago, returning to mourn the names of girls they had loved. They had plenty to spend and all night for loving. But the windows were darkened, the doors were locked, and the only girls whose names they knew had no name now but dust.

  Mama would rise from her bed so wide, the Woman The Pope Didn’t Want, so fierce to defend the weak and the motherless, so watchful of the sparrow’s fall until a dollar was involved. And saw some too-late lover come to stand below a lamp that made the whole night look hired.

  Down on the corner she heard some woman jangling around for a straight four dollar trick. Then her husband, down the block, signaling with a set of keys of his own – ‘I got a trick here, Baby, so come on home.’ And the empty night came down again.

  From somewhere upstairs or somewhere down, a mountain girl’s voice began telling the dark—

  Oh blow away the morning dew—

  And knew, Mama knew that soon or late the hour would come when the hurry-up wagon would haul girls with pride and girls with none, those who had saved and those without Penny One, to that cellar below the cells where one door leads to freedom and another door leads to jail. One back to the street and one to a tier. That some would buy out then and some would bail out and some would cry off on their sisters.

  Oh blow away the morning dew

  How sweet the winds do blow

  ‘If I can’t die sanctified,’ Mama crossed herself where she stood, ‘at least let me die blessed.’

  Because the air was so close, the whiskey so bad, the prices so high and the place so hard to climb up to, everyone came to Dockery’s Dollhouse night after night while other bars stayed empty.

  Everyone came, that is, but the law. To this lopsided shambles, where the floor slanted slightly, no police ever came. When the big hush fell that meant trouble was starting, the old man drew the shutters until the trouble was done.

  The old man had himself never fought another man in his life – yet he took a senile pleasure in watching others go at it. He pretended that it was the manly thing, to ‘let them fight it out’ – but the titillating joy he took when the first blood flowed was a womanish delight.

  And though there were frequent brawls, he took care that none attracted the attention of strangers on the street outside. Only the steady thud of the fans overhead and a desperate scuffle of shoes and breath would be heard when two panders fought up and down the floor.

  Suddenly as it began it would be done. Doc would be letting in the light, victor and vanquished would be having a shot on the house, the babble of voices would rise once more, the juke would start Dream Train or It’s Only a Paper Moon – and everyone would feel something real had been accomplished at last.

  ‘Let’s see what them damn mackers are up to,’ hustlers would suggest to each other on afternoons off – ‘I’d rather see a fight tonight than ride the New York Central—’

  If a man were hurt so seriously that he could not rise to drink, old Doc poured a shot down his throat personally, and friends hoisted him and deposited him behind some less lucky dive.

  Yet all the fights were strangely unnecessary, and not one of them ever solved anything. The mackers never fought over anything real, like money or love. Had High Daddy really
told Easy Rider’s woman that she didn’t dress her man with class? Had Easy Rider actually said that Spanish Max would stool on his own mother? They fought for their honor, that must have been it.

  Not because they had too much whiskey in them, but because they hadn’t enough. Their lives went dry as their glasses; lack of love parched their throats. They wished to be drunken, forever drunken.

  ‘Too much salt on the potato chips,’ someone was always complaining to Dockery.

  ‘Them chips is what gives people a thirst,’ Doc explained, ‘it’s why the mustard bowls is always full and plenty of good old salty pretzels too.’

  To be drunken, forever drunken.

  Yet Dove came there at noon, long before the drinkers’ hour, only to put his sample case below the table and his book above it, to order a poor-boy sandwich and a bottle of beer.

  Then the book before him, the beer forgotten, at last he saw for himself how different an A was from a B.

  He was studying M and N one noon when a shadow fell across the page and Finnerty’s finger shut the book like shutting it forever.

  ‘What kind of con is this – Fairy Tales – you connin’ little kids or something now, country boy?’

  Dove took his book and pocketed it. ‘Hello, Oliver,’ he said.

  Finnerty shook his head incredulously. ‘To think I took you for the simplest fool in town. To think that I thought that W on your forehead stood for Watkins.’

  ‘I’m in the field for Watkins, Mister,’ Dove reminded the pander with understandable pride.

  ‘Man, you are great. Simply great. And the sample case tops it. Just tops it. Lugging that thing with your country look, who could ever have guessed what your real line of goods was?’

  He pulled a chair beside Dove’s, and sat so near and talked so low, his mouth right at Dove’s ear and his little finger hooked to Dove’s, that Dove felt trapped between him and the wall.

  ‘Buddy, as your buddy,’ Oliver whispered wetly, ‘it’s now my duty to tell you that my new child got one terrible hard edge out for you. It’s all I can do to keep her from coming in on you. No, I don’t mean that real hard swindle where she took the rap and you went south with the bundle. I doubt Texas will extradite you for that. But how’s your conscience resting, buddy? Did you know the broad done a hundred days without commissary? You and I both know what it is to be busted without a pack, Jack. Of course if that’s how you expect your broads to do time that’s your business. But I wouldn’t treat a yellow dog like that.’