Somebody in Boots

by Nelson Algren

  Nubby rose, as though with misgivings, and would go no farther than the Southern Pacific freight depot with Cass. The depot was darkened but for one small light burning beneath a green shade in the ticket office. Nubby slouched crookedly against the baggage car in the darkness, jingling the coins in his pocket. He gave Cass his hand.

  “Yer sure lucky to have kin-folk,” he said, “all I got is my brother Elmy, an’ nobody knows where he is.” There were tears, either feigned or real in Nubby’s voice, “I guess Elmy maybe died of bein’ mean by now, like all my folks done.”

  Cass mumbled, “Glad to’ve knowed y’all,” and turned down Nevada Street and toward the town. Over the mountain hung a high hood of night-dark. The mountain snaked four times, then rose, in one sheer point, into the high hood.

  As he walked through the dusk Cass passed a young orchard, and the odor of cherry and wild plum came to him mingled and fainting together. Somewhere to his left a drowsy dove was calling low and patiently. The great moon came over the edge of the prairie, and the velvet dark came down.

  As he came into town Cass saw Clark Casner, the Santa Fé ticket agent, hunkered up on the courthouse steps. Cass remembered this lank ribbon of a man, so full of sighs and sleepy blinkings. Clark sat with his thin knees supporting his chin, poking a yellow toothpick between his teeth. Cass stood above him, saying who he was, and the agent began nodding his head mechanically. He replied nothing at all, merely shifted the toothpick. Then his legs flung out, he was off the steps and pumping Cass’s hand.

  “Why, dammit all, boy, yore Bry’n McKay’s brother,—hain’t yo ? Damme, ah wouldn’t have knowed yo’ from third base. Y’eve shore put on size since ye’ tuk out o’ town, hain’t yo’? How long now is thet? Ah guess po’ Bry’n was still around then, weren’t he?”

  “Five years,” Cass replied, and then wondered why he said five instead of the three that it was.

  “Well, son, yore brother was a good boy, ’cause ah knowed him ’fore he went oversea. An’ mebbe you was a good boy an’ yore sister was a good woman, ah dunno ’bout that—but yore pappy was the meanest man that ever hit this town, an’ in mah time we’ve had lots o’ bad hats here. But ah don’t spec’ ah have to tell you ’bout yore own paw, do ah, son?”

  He peered into Cass’s face, to read there what he could of shame or fear or pain. Cass averted his eyes; he wanted to ask Clark Casner something. Something a hundredfold more difficult than asking a stranger on the street for a nickel.

  “Ah don’ know what ’came of mah ol’ man, ex-actly,” he confessed.

  The ticket agent perceived his embarrassment and tried to help him.

  “Well, he’s better off ’n Bryn.” He paused to spit out the toothpick—“Ah guess y’all know th’ old song:

  Here is to Huntsville, the land of blue skies

  Where the wild wind blows and the bulldung flies.

  If ye’ve never been to Huntsville . . .”

  He checked his tongue abruptly, seeing that he was not being taken quite as humorously as he had intended. But Cass remembered the jingle about the state penitentiary, and he added its last line for Clark—

  Never go to Huntsville—it’s the back door to hell—

  and he walked away with shame like a plunging sword within.

  As he passed the Poblano Café a girl tapped on the window from the inside. It was smoky in the place, he saw men drinking there. He waved his hand at the girl, saw that it was not that Pepita to whom he had once brought customers, and passed on.

  Moonlight was misting Chihuahua Street when he came in sight of the house. It looked like an old and dark-cowled nun kneeling in prayer beneath great stars, the moonlight a halo about her bent head. How quietly it waited there! And the memory of his last night in it came upon him.

  A lamp burned in the kitchen and men were talking on the porch. Cass leaned on the gate, he listened intently; voices came to him in a slow curving murmuring, in a wave that broke and fell, never falling quite to silence, never rising quite to clarity. The air smelled of punk, and the men were laughing.

  And suddenly something other than that laughter was strange. Suddenly something unheard was changed, and something unseen was hostile. Something here that had once been friendly was friendly now no more. He felt ill. He almost wished that he had gone on with Nubby.

  Someone was coming toward him. A woman, a girl—then it was Nancy, for he knew her stride, and his heart leaped up the path before him. How firmly his sister walked! How strong her stride! He felt that the gate was swinging beneath his hand even though he knew it was closed. His throat constricted a little when Nancy spoke.

  “Who is thet there?” she asked.

  For a moment he could not answer; he lifted his face to be recognized, instead. In the dimness he could not see Nancy’s face clearly, and he waited for her to come closer to see his. But she paused in the pathway, and her voice changed, till it was like a quick whispering there.

  “Y’all kin come in fo’ a dolla’,” she said in that flat hard whispering, “a pahty cost but a dolla’. Hev y’all got a dolla’, fella?”

  The men on the porch had stopped laughing to listen; so he only shook his head.

  PART THREE

  Chicago

  The “dangerous class,” the social scum (lumpenproletariat), that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

  THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

  11

  CHICAGO’S SOUTH SIDE seethed in the spring of ’thirty-one. Unemployment demonstrations, eviction riots and strikes shook the city. In the dress shop where Norah Egan worked there were three wage-cuts in the month of March, and another was threatened for April.

  Norah Egan hadn’t worked in the shop very long, and sometimes it was hard for her to breathe in the place. All the tall windows were kept tightly closed here, even when green April came, because when they were opened the lake wind whisked across stacks of blue bungalow aprons and white morning frocks, and blew the frocks on the top to the door. And the door was pretty dirty, for it was hard to sweep between the machines. There were so many machines here, you see, that’s what made this door so hard to sweep. There were so many machines, and the loft was so small, and dirt on the door didn’t matter much anyhow. No one would have thought that any one man could ever have gotten ninety big sewing machines into so small a room.

  On one of the machines a belt was loose, so that it kept slipping and slapping all day, from morning till night, slip-slopslapping all day; till it made some of the girls want to cry out or scream something.

  Norah Egan wanted to scream or cry out because she hated the shop’s hurry-up sounds. From where she sat in the loft’s far corner she sometimes wanted to call out something or swear, right in the foreman’s face. “It’s loose, Sheely. Why don’t you tighten it? Why don’t you fire me? What time will it ever be quiet in here?”

  Maybe that was what Norah wanted to ask, something without much sense in it like that.

  But Norah didn’t even so much as ask for a glass of cold water, far less yell out at the foreman some nonsense about the shop’s hurry-up noises. Instead, she set her teeth down tight into her nerves and forced her thirst back down her throat; and breathed in the odor of doth that was new mingled with the smell of rancid sewing machine oil and the smell of sweat from ninety bodies bending and bowing all about her.

  Spindles went here, bobbins too, up and down and up and down. Yet it wasn’t the slapping of the belt nor the incessant drone of many spindles, nor yet a low cloud of sweat-stench about her that Norah Egan minded most. What made things so hard, from the very first day, was not having water from morning till noon and then not from noon until the power was closed. That’s what made things so hard. From her very first day.

  There was a sink behind a partition near the shipping
room on the second floor—but it took six minutes to get down there and six to get back, that was the hitch. Twelve whole minutes, and who could tell what a foreman might do in twelve minutes? Oh, you’d get his permission if you asked it all right. Sheely seldom refused his girls such small favors; only when you came back your machine was locked up and your pay was waiting, with five percent off for the cost of cashing your check. That was the hitch there. (But maybe it wasn’t all Sheely’s fault, he had his orders like everyone else; he had his orders, and three kids at home.)

  So you learned things from others, you waited and watched. You learned that the best way to do was to drink all that your stomach could hold in the morning and then try to slip-sneak down to the sink a minute before the others at noon. Now, there were only twenty minutes for lunch here, so you had to eat quick—but get downstairs first. Take your sandwich with you and chew in line behind the faucet, get it all down before it’s your turn so there wouldn’t be dry crumbs left in your teeth all afternoon. Don’t stop to talk—chew! Ninety other girls got thirst too—don’t push, we still got nine minutes—Don’t shove, shovin’ won’t get you water no faster—Say!—Quit shovin’ back there an’ let a girl drink! Say, don’t you push me—Twenty whole minutes for lunch.

  It’s kind of tough all right, at first. But you get used to it after a while. If you’re tough. Only, Norah Egan wasn’t so tough. And that was the hitch there. She was small, and slight, and had always had someone stronger to take care of her. She had always had someone, and now she had no one, and a loose belt kept slipping and slapping all day.

  Norah would have liked to be one of the pressers, for pressers had only to iron, fold and pin, and they earned eight dollars a week. Only Norah knew that it would be of no use even to ask Ed Sheely for such a job, because Ed Sheely didn’t like Norah very well. Norah kicked too much, from the start. She kicked when he gave her organdie to sew, instead of being a little grateful to him for giving her something to do. Organdie was the hardest to handle of all the materials, and it paid least of all. It was so stiff and so thin it made your fingers numb just to work with it an hour, and if you weren’t very careful it tore. That was bad, when organdie tore. The garment had to be bought then, and the retail price paid for it too. Six bits out of your check then, sometimes a dollar, and you finished the garment at home. And since you got only half a cent a dozen for ruffled organdie collars and cuffs, mistakes came rather dear. But for French seams you got five cents a dozen—just ten times as much and no harder to handle. So Norah wanted to work with French seams sometimes, and when she never got anything but gingham and percale and organdie, she kicked.

  Once she kicked about the windows being kept shut, and once about the dirt on the floor. First she wanted this, then she wanted that. Then she raised a stink about the sink downstairs, that Sheely shouldn’t count the time it took to get down there and back. And then she said that Sheely was favoring one of the girls with French seams. But she never said one word about a belt being loose, and she never asked anyone to tighten that belt. That slipping sound went too deep for speech. And she never seemed to realize that Sheely had three kids.

  Through March, and all through the brief green April, Norah’s weekly checks ranged from four dollars and ninety-five cents to seven dollars and fifty cents. That was the busy season then, and they were locked in each night till seven-thirty. Ed Sheely punched the time-clock for them at five-fifteen, and then he locked the doors.

  “Got to do accordin’ to law,” he said every night, gulping in apology after the doors were locked.

  Norah wanted to punch out her own time, and she didn’t want to punch it until she’d finished work. So she kicked. And Sheely gave her organdie just to shut her up.

  In the first week of that June work began to slack a little in the Sunshine Frock Shop. For that week Norah drew only four dollars. Next week it was two and a quarter. And the week after that she had no work at all, just walked in every morning and sat at her machine with her basket empty beside her chair, to wait for Sheely to give her something to do. Organdie or muslin or anything at all.

  And every day of that hot week Norah sat doing nothing from morning till dark. Just sitting and waiting and looking down at her palms, and once in a while looking outside at two telephone wires hanging limply in the heat.

  Norah saw Sheely give work to his favorites whenever work came in, and once when he walked by she said, “I’m still workin’ here, Ed.”

  “You only work on French ruffles,” Ed answered, and kept right on walking.

  Sometimes girls about her looked at Norah sidewise after that, wondering when Sheely would give the blonde kid a little something or other to do. Norah saw that look, what others were hoping a little, and she wanted to toss back her head and shout at them all: “You don’t have to feel sorry for me. Not a one of you. I can take care of myself O.K.” Only Norah couldn’t, she never had. There had always been someone stronger, and now there was no one; and she had never had to rush so, just to eat, in all her life before.

  When only three or four in that whole dim loft were working, then Norah Egan didn’t feel quite so badly. But one day everyone she could see had something to do for at least an hour; everyone but herself. Everybody made at least lunch-money that day; everyone save herself. Herself she just sat doing nothing at all, and looking down at her palms. She smelled woman-sweat like a dirty pall all about her, scuffed her shoes through the dirt beneath her feet; wondered about the weather, when days would grow cooler; wondered about room-rent, how she would pay it; wondered about Sheely’s three kids, what they looked like; and then she wondered how soon times would get good again. That was all on a stifling Friday morning, and there was a small off-season rush, and Norah was hungry a little.

  When the power was closed at noon that day she didn’t have much worth washing down with water, so instead of going downstairs to the sink with the others she went straight on down to the first floor and then straight on out the door. She took a leisurely stroll along the outer drive, saw a boy picking dandelions behind the Field Museum, watched red and green roadsters going up and down in the Nash display on the boulevard, looked at bonbons in a Fanny May window, chewed gum and held her hands on her hips; and she didn’t go back to the Sunshine shop at twelve-twenty-five as she should have.

  On Monday she answered an ad for work in a dress shop on West Lake Street. And she was hired so quickly, given machine and basket and cloth and shears so fast, that she should have been at least a little suspicious. It wasn’t until the week was out that she learned she’d been hired only as an apprentice. For the week’s work she was given the apprentice wage: fifty-six cents. Eight cents a dozen for seven dozen aprons turned out in that whole sultry week of July. So that was the hitch there. She quit the place feeling a little bewildered and wishing that days weren’t so hot.

  The day after Norah quit the Lake Street shop she saw the same aprons on sale for a dime apiece. She saw them in Woolworth’s on North State; she stood looking in the window with her half-dollar wage in her palm. And it seemed to Norah Egan then, in that moment of looking at those aprons through a plate-glass window on North State, comparing the pink with the mauve and the green with the blue, while strangers passed and traffic crashed, that from somewhere far far up above her there came down the drone of many spindles. Up, then down. And Norah looked up to see what that sound was, but it was only the Lake Street L rumbling around the loop.

  Every day then, all through late July and August, Norah followed the Help-Wanted-Female-Gentile column. Every day, at the bottom of a whole row of little trick ads, she read the little trick ads of the Lake Street shop. And wherever she went other people knew tricks, and she didn’t know any, and most things had a hitch. But Norah found all the ads out after a while. Each morning she walked from Thirteenth and Dearborn to the Daily Times building to look at the want-ad column posted outside the pressroom. Each morning she went from office to office, from house to house, all through Chicago’s blaz
ing summer, pounding the long Chicago pavements, knocking in the early forenoon heat at a million hostile Chicago doors.

  Once she got a job washing windows, way up on the Northwest Side. But she didn’t wash the windows very well because she was hungry a little; and the woman who had hired her said there was nothing else to do, after she’d seen how Norah had done the windows. Norah got thirty-five cents from her though, and a cup of coffee before she left.

  In the first week of September a small ad appeared in the Herald:

  WANTED: DANCER. EXP. PREF. APPLY HAUSER’S RIALTO.—S. STATE.

  Hauser himself was out front barking when Norah answered that ad. He was a paunchy person with a red shoe-button mouth wearing a black and mountainous derby far down over both ears; but he treated Norah like a gentleman ought, and he gave her a dancing job.

  Norah had danced in high-school a little; only this wasn’t that kind of dancing.

  The Little Rialto offered both white and colored burlesque to adult audiences only. Herman Hauser pointed to enlarged photos on either side of the ticket cage, those on the right being of white girls, and those on the left of black. Above his head a star-bordered sign swung in the State Street breeze:

  HOT PEPY BURLESK! NO MINERS ALOUD!

  The job paid seven-fifty a week, so Norah did just as she was told. She had grace and looks, and she learned quickly. Herman patted her shoulder, approving.

  “You’ll be at the Haymarket some day,” he assured her, and took her about the waist.

  Norah’s photograph had been outside only two hours, when the shoe-shine boys and newsboys of the street noticed the change. Half a dozen of them were waiting for her when she came out at the end of the afternoon show. One jumped up on his shine-box the minute he saw her, and began barking in imitation of Herman. Norah saw him pointing, heard the sudden shrill clamor of boy-voices mocking, and fled. But they flocked after her on either side, all the way down to Ninth and Dearborn.