Somebody in Boots

by Nelson Algren

  Cass thought the applause then would never end, and he was puzzled to know why the girl’s simple assertion should have provoked such wild cheering. It was minutes before the white speaker could begin again. After he had finished, the chairman, a Negro, leaned over the railing of the platform and scolded the crowd roundly for their discourtesy.

  Other speakers followed. Cass was bored. Some spoke of charity beans, of overcrowded conditions in shelters, some of evictions, and some of families that had to live in damp basements. One told how the Republican party, by chicanery and bribes and hypocritical promises, had gained control of the black vote in Chicago, and then had sold the black people out. Another spoke of the muddle-headedness of the Garveyites, Negroes who had a scheme to take the black race back to Africa.

  “Africa or America,” this speaker declared, “it doesn’t matter where the Negro lives, he will be exploited in one place just as thoroughly as in another; he will be exploited till the day when the workers of the world take over their earth.”

  An elderly Irish woman described the wretched shanties for which workers were forced to pay high rents. A young Jewish girl spoke of the discrimination against both Negroes and Jews at employment agencies, in schools, at bathing beaches, and told of the methods used by police to crush protest.

  Cass wished to leave now, but Doak was rapt in the speakers’ words.

  A short stocky Negro took the platform and called for a vote of protest against the legal lynching of the nine Negro boys framed in Alabama on a rape charge. He explained how the lives of these innocent boys could be saved only by a mass protest of workers. The Southern white ruling class were determined that the nine should die, in order “to set an example” to the Negro masses of the South. He then proposed the motion of protest, and the audience endorsed it with renewed cheering.

  Cass rose. “Let’s go, Dill,” he said. “They talk sech lawng words that it don’t all make sense.”

  Nevertheless, Cass went again several times to the Washington Park forums. At heart he would rather have got dead drunk on his evening off; he would have enjoyed that more than sitting on the grass with Dill, listening to something he did not understand. But it wasn’t much fun getting drunk alone, and it cost too much anyhow. And he feared to be drunk, lest it mean six months making brick in the bridewell for him because of his past record. Dill seemed to be the only man now who had time for him, and Dill wouldn’t drink. So Cass went to the park for want of something more interesting to do. Often he wished that he had Nubby O’Neill or Olin Jones for a friend once more.

  “Me an’ Nub was sure two tough boys for any bulls to handle,” he assured himself in his loneliest moments.

  He left the show each night at one, walked with Dill north to Van Buren, and then continued north alone, to Ontario. Usually he was back in his room by twenty minutes after one.

  He enjoyed this brief walk, after the long day. At one A.M. streets were still and air was purged of thronging thousands. From twelve to twelve he barked until his throat hurt; from twelve to twelve the Little Rialto rang with laughter and stank with the odor of unwashed men. Before the day began once more Cass had this quiet walking-time of release. It gave him a few minutes to gather himself, to breathe deeply, and to wonder whether he would ever see Norah Egan again.

  One night he was crossing State just north of Erie when a woman called from close behind him.

  “What a second there, Red. I got to talk somethin’ to you.” Cass’s heart leaped like a fountain—but when he heard the voice again he knew it was not Norah’s. He stopped in the middle of the track to look back, and he saw a woman’s form dimly outlined in a doorway.

  “You callin’ me?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Come on over here. I got to talk to you somethin’.”

  “If y’all want talk with me come over here an’ say it.”

  There was only a low tittering for reply; he turned to go. But before he had reached the opposite curb the woman spoke again.

  “Aw say now, don’t go runnin’ off on me like that. I’ll bet you worked real hard today in the little nigger showhouse, didn’t you, Red?”

  She giggled, and repeated, “Didn’t you, Red?”

  “One of Herman’s girls drunk,” Cass thought, “How’d she get ’way up here ah wonder.”

  “Is that you, Ruby?” he asked, naming one of Herman’s white choristers.

  She didn’t reply, so he crossed over and asked, “Y’all want ah should see yo’ home, Ruby?” He stood under a lamplight, peering into night-dark.

  The voice from the doorway became suddenly impatient.

  “Oh, fer god’s sake, hon, don’t stand there gawpin’ like you don’t know what it’s all about. You ain’t scared of girls, are you?”

  Cass stepped out of the light. His curiosity was aroused. But no more than his curiosity. He took two steps toward her, paused and said, “No, ah ain’t scared of girls, but ah ain’t, . . .” and a fist like steel smashed across his nose, fist-steel hit him twice below the heart. Cass threw up his hands in panic-defense—and then he was flat on his back in the doorway, and the hand on his mouth was a stump of a hand, and a face grinning down was Nubby O’Neill’s.

  For one moment Cass thought that Nubby was going to cut his throat in that doorway.

  “Didn’t think I was still around, did you, son?”

  Cass could do nothing but writhe helplessly. He was so shaken by fear and shock that he did not hear Nubby’s words clearly. Not until after a full minute had passed did he realize that Nubby was not hitting him. Nubby was only laughing low above him, and the girl, whoever she’d been, was gone.

  “Ah’m terrible sorry, Judge,” Cass pleaded, “Honest to Jesus, Nub, ah didn’t mean harm that time. Jesus strike me dead ah didn’t. Ah been huntin’ all over town for y’all, Judge, every day ever since—Honest to Jesus Christ in Heaven above so help me God—ah’ll pay y’all the dough—every cent—int’rest—ah never spent a dime of it—oh let me up, Nub.”

  Nubby cracked him across the mouth with his stump for answer.

  “Goddamn yer dirty dollars, anyhow. There’s nothin’ tight about me, son, an’ never was. Is money all you ever think of, Red, just money? And did I ask you fer any? Did I say I was after you fer a couple measly bucks? Why, goddamn you, I got more in my poke right this minute than you’ll ever see in all yer life if ya live a hundred years.”

  “Ah guess y’all didn’t shoot that cop after all, did yo’, Nub?” Cass asked.

  Nubby cracked him across the teeth with the stump again. His teeth rattled with the blow. Cass whined, “Why y’all do that, Nub, if yo’ don’t care about the dough? What yo’ sore about, Judge? Couldn’t y’all let me jest set up a spell, if yore not really sore?”

  “You stay down an’ I’ll tell ya why I’m sore. Because yer a trayter is why I’m sore. I’m so sore I might do somethin’ terrible ’most any minute now, so don’t get me no sorer. Five times in two weeks now I seen ya walkin’ with a nigger so black he looks like a raincloud comin’ down the street. How come you doin’ me this way, son? How come you ferget how I slap hell out o’ you once fer messin’ with them ugly black sons-a-bitches? You fergit ’most everythin’ a body tries to learn ya, don’t ya?”

  He grazed Cass’s nose, already battered, with his stump; it didn’t hurt so much this time, but it was frightening.

  “Why goddamn it, son, yer a downright dis-grace to me—that’s what it’s cornin’ down to. Why, I cried almost when I first seen ya doin’ me that way, after all I learned ya. Oh I’ve tried so damned hard, son. An’ this is how—you—do me—”

  His voice caught. He was on the verge of tears, Cass felt.

  “Ah’m right sorry, Judge,” Cass repeated earnestly, beginning slowly now to realize his error with Dill. “Ah won’t do y’all that way no more. Ah guess ah jes’ forgot how bad them niggers could be.”

  Nubby rose then, cautiously. Cass brushed the dust of the doorway off his trousers, and began to feel a litt
le glad that he’d found Nub again. Nubby turned him around and brushed dirt off the back of his coat.

  “Nice coat yer wearin’, son,” he commented.

  Cass said, “Yeah—an’ y’all are still wearin’ them boots, even up here, aint yo’, Nub?” He laughed nervously. Good ol’ Nub. He sure must have plugged that cop all right.

  “Come on down to the corner, son, an’ I’ll buy you a beer. You don’t deserve it hardly, but I just like you so much I got to do you somethin’ after lickin’ you like that. An’ I could have licked you bad, I guess ya know. Only I didn’t—I just let ya go.”

  Cass hesitated then, taking over-long to finish the brushing of his cap.

  “I got to talk to ya, son,” and Nubby took his arm. “I like you all right, son. I ain’t sore about nothin’.”

  Over a stein of beer at the corner tavern Nubby said, “I’ve gone pretty straight, son. I ran into Elmer one day last winter, an’ he got such a good job now, runnin’ a elevator somewheres, that I’ve went straight.”

  Nubby paused, to shut one eye and probe Cass with the other.

  “Haven’t you, son?”

  Cass said, “Yeah, ah reck’n so.”

  Cass never walked with Dill Doak again. The Washington Park forums became the merest fly-speck in his memory. And Nubby came past the show-house, with a wave of the hand, almost every night. On Cass’s evening off they drank together. When Nubby drank too heavily he siept on Cass’s cot, in Cass’s room, and Cass siept on the door. Cass was careful not to get too drunk.

  •

  In the first week of November Cass saw Norah Egan. She was stepping off a curb in a streetlamp’s glow, he caught the dash of her blue coat slantwise through traffic. A light blue coat, a street-lamp’s glow—and a streetcar clanged in between. Cass heard his heart begin storming in his throat. The car wobbled its rump with gathered speed, clanging as it wobbled—to leave him standing in the middle of South State with Norah in his arms. And her eyes so wide with fear or surprise that he could not even bend to kiss her.

  “I seen you comin’, Red,” she said, and she took one small step back. Cass waited for her eyes to lose their fear. They were looking up at him as they had in their earilest hours together, with a wild fear of being struck.

  “They sprang me, hon,” was all he could think to say; and then he could only stand and say nothing at all, with a sickly grin smeared over half of his face and both his hands holding hers.

  An auto curvetted past, blasting horn-wrath at them.

  “I seen you comin’, Red. Only I didn’t know it was you. What you got on your head anyhow?” She spoke hoarsely and then looked down at her palms, imprisoned in his. But when she looked up she smiled a little, so he stooped to kiss her then.

  “It’s a show-hat ah got on mah head,” he said proudly.

  “Kissin’ on the mouth ain’t healthy, Red,” she cautioned, and her voice sounded small and wan. She spoke without emotion, with a weak half-smile. Cass took her hand and took off his hat. He led her across the street.

  “Ah’m the big shot here,” he said, waving the hat toward the Little Rialto. “This is where ah work, Blondie, an’ that there is mah boss. Ah work here. This’s Mist’ Hauser.” He took the trumpet from Herman. Norah gave Herman a sidelong glance, and leaned against the ticket-cage. “How you doin’ in there, hon?” she asked the bobbed-haired camel within. Herman Hauser coughed into an unclean handkerchief; he looked once at Norah, and once at Cass, and then at the camel in the ticket-cage. Cass strode up and down in long coltish strides, the horn at his mouth.

  “See the World’s Fair bubble dance, boys! See the hottest girl-show off the grounds! Last show about to begin!”

  When he noticed that Norah was speaking to the ticket-taker instead of watching him admiringly, he stopped and went to her. He put his arm about her waist, and he grinned over at Herman. Herman was folding a handkerchief carefully, preparatory to placing it in his left-hand hip pocket.

  “See, Mist’ Hauser, ah found Blondie again.”

  Herman remained absorbed in the handkerchief ’s folds, and Norah wriggled free.

  “You shouldn’t never walk off right in the middle like that,” Herman said at last. “Not for noting you shouldn’t walk off.” And Norah said, “Don’t, hon,” wriggling free.

  Herman placed the handkerchief in the pocket.

  “You should be acquainted by this time how bad for business is women standing leaning in front. Fined I could even be getting.”

  He shook his head sadly. “Did you say ‘wife’?” he asked sternly.

  Six dollars a week was pretty much.

  “I guess I’d better be runnin’ along now,” Norah offered.

  Cass held her hand, not quite understanding.

  “Y’all wait inside for me,” he said.

  Herman turned away as though in disgust. When he reached the door he spoke over his shoulder.

  “Tickets is ten cents, Red,” he said.

  But he didn’t even like it at ten cents, Cass could tell. He let Norah’s hand go, and he went to the ticket-cage. She restrained his hand when he reached for his change.

  “Ain’t you sore, Red?” she asked, looking close.

  He always had been a queer customer. You never could tell what he really wanted, and what he might be going to do next.

  He shook his head, handed her the ticket. No, he wasn’t sore. He just wanted her to go inside and wait.

  “I got a room down the street. We’ll go up when I’m through, an’ we’ll talk.”

  She looked close and then stepped back, just an inch; and she didn’t take the ticket.

  Cass cocked his head to the side and looked down; he saw her eyes widen, and he saw her fear returning. He spoke slowly. “Ah swear to Christ ah ain’t sore, Norah. Don’t look so scared, hon. Why—ah ain’t been sore one single second even. Ah been workin’ an’ savin’ an’ layin’ by, the whole time. We’ll get married, hon.”

  He broke off, and she laughed a little. She caught it, of course, when he said that.

  He’d marry her all right. He’d get her alone up in that room and slap the soopreme hell out of her, that’s how he’d marry her. She knew. She knew them all. They all tried a trick or two to get even, and they never forgot when once they got trimmed. If once you slipped over a fast one, by thinking faster, they’d get even if they had to bust a gut to get even. If it took two years to do it, they’d get their own back.

  “I don’t want to get married yet,” she said, “I got another date. But I’ll come by an’ see you sometime, an’ then we’ll talk.”

  She twisted one hand free. The camel in the ticket-cage tapped on the window. “You’re lettin’ customers go by,’ she warned.

  “Come in here, Red,” Herman called from the door, and Cass took two steps toward him; then Norah started in the other direction, and he turned to follow. She was walking fast, he had to run a few steps to catch up. He took hold of the sleeve of her coat because she wouldn’t stop, but kept on going a little faster all the time.

  “Why y’all actin’ so silly, Blondie? Don’t yo’ want to get married?” He clutched at his hat to keep it from toppling.

  “Nope, I’d rather go it alone, Red, that’s what I want. I might get you in trouble. I might—well, you don’t need me really, an’ you got a big job now—an’ I never did need no one y’know.”

  “But ah do need y’all, Norah. Ah been workin’ an’ savin’ an’ puttin’ by.”

  Same old spoosh, same old lunk. And the soft-nasty ones were the meanest.

  She was getting out of wind. They had walked almost two blocks, and she had a stitch in her side.

  “You don’t need me an’ I don’t need you. Better get back on the job, Red. I got a date. I got a new boyfriend. I’m gonna meet him, I guess.”

  He drew her into a doorway then, and would not let her go. He saw that she was lying out of fear, and he had to be sure that he knew what she feared. This street where World’s Fair flags had
flown was cold and empty now. The door of a beer tavern across the street opened and drunken music crashed briefly forth. Cass could see people in there, men and women drinking together, and he heard a child’s voice laughing past him; then the laughter was lost.

  “I only got twelve bucks out of that drugstore, Red—can y’imagine there wasn’t no more’n that?”

  “Ah’m not askin’ what y’all got,” he protested, groping blindly for her fear. “What ah’m askin’ is y’all should come back to Herman’s till ah’m through, an’ then we’ll go up to mah place.”

  That was the third time he’d handed her that. Well, if lying wouldn’t get rid of him, then the real thing would.

  “I’m sick, Red. Bad sick. You’d catch somethin’ from me. I been in Venereal House since May. I ain’t right yet.”

  Both barrels like that she let him have it. He lifted her chin to see her eyes, and he stood for a long while looking down. It took him a while to understand, but he got it after a minute. After a minute, he saw she spoke truth. He shook his head then, and he let her chin go. She thought she’d gotten rid of him then for sure.

  Only she hadn’t, she’d only thought so.

  “It don’t really matter none, hon, ’cause y’all could get well again.”

  He said that funny-like, as though he were swallowing. She looked at him a second, then took his arm.

  “All right, Red,” she said. “You win. Let’s go.”

  All the way back to the Little Rialto neither spoke. When they got in front of the place and saw Herman barking under the big sign Cass said, “Sit in the back row. It won’t be long now till ah’m through. We’ll have a drink across the street before we go up to the room.”

  “I can’t drink nothin’ but milk these days, hon,” she said. She touched her throat with one finger, looking wan. She took the ticket from him and added, “You know, I really thought fer a minute you was sore about somethin’?” As she went through the door the border of her coat caught on the door’s corner; she stooped, unhooked it, and was inside. Cass saw Herman walking around the ticket-cage with his eyes on the ground as though he had just dropped something. He encircled the cage twice, picked a penny off the pavement, and glanced up at Cass. Cass stood apologetically, appearing solemnly repentant. “Ah just haid to cut out after her when she tried walkin’ off, Mist’ Hauser,”; he reached for the megaphone, but Herman did not surrender it so easily.