The Devil's Stocking

by Nelson Algren

  “But the one thing I ought to be afraid of—me—I have no fear at all.”

  “Here comes the Blinky, girls!” the girl at the front desk whispered into the mike before she pressed the buzzer to let the Blinky in.

  The Blinky was a tall, stout boy, wearing blue-tinted glasses and well dressed; he was led by a young German shepherd.

  The dog, a male, leaped wildly, tail wagging furiously at the scent of the women. He went from lap to lap wriggling with pleasure. When Big Benjamin took his leash, however, he went to a corner and lay quietly.

  The Blinky always picked Fortune, yet now he stood perplexed.

  “There’s a new woman here,” he announced in the high-pitched voice peculiar to the blind.

  Nobody enlightened him.

  “Speak up, new girl,” he demanded.

  “I’m the latest,” Dovie-Jean acknowledged at last.

  At the sound of her voice a thin, knowing smile flicked his lips.

  “I see,” he decided, “Okay. Let’s change my luck.”

  In the room he stood, naked, holding the basin of water while she washed him. “I’ve never gone down on a black woman,” he admitted. “What is it like?”

  “Like eating a sardine through a Brillo pad, I’ve been told,” Dovie-Jean assured him.

  “I was a whore before I knew it,” the square-faced little blonde, Tracy, picked up the reminiscent mood of the strange twilit afternoon. She took off her rimless specs as if the better to remember.

  “I took on guys now and again and if they felt like buying me a little something afters—a hat or a blouse or a pair of shoes—I took what was offered. I didn’t have any clear idea of what I was doing.” She laughed a light, airy laugh and tossed back her blond bangs. “The guy who cleared it all up for me was the only one who cared about me. He was even more innocent than me, for God’s sake.

  “Blakey was a skinny little clown, a little on the silly side but not too silly. What he was good at was spotting leaks for the gas company. He used to hang head down in attics and crawl hands and knees through tunnels, looking for leaks. The company valued Blakey. They said he had a good nose. Sometimes he could spot a leak when the gas-smelling machine didn’t give a flicker.

  “Blakey had a good heart, a real good heart. He was the kind who wasn’t bright enough to stay out of trouble, and Blakey’s trouble was his wife. She’d been bedridden two years when I met him.

  “He didn’t spill his guts to me about her. It just came out in conversation. Later, in bed, he told me I’d been his first lay in two years. His old lady’s trouble was her heart, he said. He was the kind of man you got to believe because he ain’t smart enough to lie.

  “Once a week we’d have dinner in some cheap chop suey joint, the kind without a bar. He thought I was a lady, for God’s sake. Even though he knew I still took on half a dozen tricks a week. I know he knew because he told me once, ‘We can get along without that. ’

  “Only we couldn’t. Whatever extra he had went for doctor’s bills.

  “It’s nice to have someone like that, who really needs you. It’s how Blakey made me feel. For the first time in my life, I was a human person. Blakey did that for me without even knowing he was making me a human person.

  “We used to walk around the Village Sunday morning unless his old lady had took a turn for the worse. She took a bad turn whenever she got suspicious and she was suspicious most of the time.

  “We got a knock Sunday morning, we’re in bed, there stand two cops, one in citizen dress and one in uniform. ‘Come along,’ the citizen dress says, and we go along without even asking for an arrest warrant! Green? Greener than green. They told Blakey at the station, ‘Testify against her that you gave her money and you make the street, no sweat. We won’t even have to talk to your boss.’

  “His boss was the least of it to Blakey. Blakey wasn’t afraid on his boss’s account. It was on his wife’s account he was scared. The cops had already talked to her doctor. If Blakey didn’t testify how they wanted him to, they’d talk to his wife. In Blakey’s simple mind that would be the same as knifing her.

  “Which struck me as a pretty good idea, myself.

  “He told everything straight up to the point of whether he’d paid me money. Then he lied. He saw the citizen-dress guy standing there and he got the shakes. I got thirty days.

  “That was when I found out I’m a whore.

  “I never been held since longer than overnight. Those thirty days on Riker’s Island taught me something: there ain’t a man on this earth who won’t send you up in the clutch.

  “When I think of little Blakey now all I feel for him is sorry. If I ever saw him again I’d turn him off fast. Once is enough. Never give a square an even break.

  “I just don’t believe in them squares. I’m scared of the way they live. I don’t even know what they’re laughin’ at. They make the laws that make it so hard on cats, and that makes it all the harder on themselves. They make it so we know we got to be punished hard. So why shouldn’t we get to them if we can?”

  She put her grandmotherly looking specs back on and brushed back her bangs, then smiled wistfully, without bitterness. “That’s how it goes in the Big A, girls: the less you know them, more time you do.”

  “That joint had a steel door and two armed guards,” Fortune recalled, a syndicate joint she’d worked outside of Buffalo, New York, and a killer police dog they kept half-starved. “But that wasn’t what got me down. What brought me down was the crazy nigger who ran it. A real space cadet, that one was. He wore a white football sweater with eighty-eight on the back, and a whistle around his neck like a football referee. Why the syndicate would send anybody with as little brains as that nigger had, I still can’t figure.

  “He was big. Very big. All that meat and no potatoes. He’d been a pro football player—I was told—with the Rams. He’d been concussed. I believed it.

  “He’d put six or eight of us whores into a huddle, early in the evening. A real huddle: we’d stand around him in our joint togs, our arms round each other’s shoulders, like we were playing for the N.F.L. championship, and he’d give us a locker-room pep talk.

  “‘The more you make for the joint, the more you make for your-selves, girls,’ he’d let us know. ‘And you, Miss Foo,’ he’d tell me, ‘you’re the mainspring of this squad. Your spirit is what is carrying us on.’

  “Honest to God, you’d think we were suppose to score against the tricks instead of screwing them.

  “We’d hit the hay, dead beat, about four A.M., and here he’d come busting in to our rooms, without a knock, four hours later, and blasting that stupid whistle. ‘Morning practice, girls! Rise and shine! Everybody out!’ And he really meant it. We’d be out of bed, in pajamas, he’d toss us all heavy sweatshirts, and start us jogging around the joint!

  “Some of these women, especially the ones who’d been in the trade awhile, were all out of shape. I’d usually get out in front, being the youngest, just a long-legged kid is all I was then, but I remember one old-timer—she’d been in the trade twenty years if she’d been in it a day—just gasping to me, ‘What for God’s sake is this?’

  “I was lapping the field at that point, but I couldn’t tell her. I didn’t know. I suppose what that fool thought was he was getting us into shape. He had us practicing everything up to drop-kicking. We’d run until he’d blast the whistle and holler, ‘That’s all, girls! To the showers!’

  “We’d tumble back into the sheets and get us some rest then, till early afternoon and the daily pep talk.”

  “I never heard anything like it,” Dovie-Jean repeated.

  “I’ve heard worse,” Spanish Nan commented.

  Spanish Nan had a slot-machine habit. All her quarters went into it but very few came back. Sometimes as many as three, four or five came back, which she immediately replayed. When she ran out of quarters she began changing bills. All she usually got for a two-bit piece was a dull, metallic, “pshdang!”

  Into
those twilit hours which fell between the timeless gray afternoon, and the flaring sexual panics of the late-night tricks, when the only sounds were the air conditioner’s breath beating beneath the whirr of the big electric fan, and the occasional pshdang! pshdang! of the slot machine, there sauntered in a sixty-year-old horse player with a Form stuffed into his bright sports jacket, his collar open, his tie askew, his hearing aid in one ear and his attitude that of a kid of twenty-one, announcing the latest flash from Aqueduct.

  “Summer Girl win driving!” He tossed his program, marked and torn, into Dovie-Jean’s lap, then circled the parlor waving a green tip sheet. “Fromarco wire to wire! Win going away!”

  “This is a whorehouse, Flash,” Spanish Nan reminded him, “not a bookie. Sit down.” Then added, turning to Dovie-Jean, “He’ll be all right once he’s settled down. He acts like a goof but he got good sense. You have to know how to take him.”

  Flash sat down beside Dovie-Jean on the divan and adjusted his hearing aid. “You want to see me turn up the level on it?” he asked her, and turned it up. “Now you want to see me turn it down?” And turned it down.

  “Haven’t I seen you somewheres before?” she asked him.

  “I know, I know. Only it ain’t me. Every time Art Carney shows up on TV I get it the next day. I ain’t Art Carney. I ain’t nobody. I never been on TV, I never met Art Carney. I never met Jackie Gleason. I never met nobody—and thank God for that. Now, what do you think I do when I’m down two hundred sixty at the end of the seventh? What would you do?”

  “If I were down two hundred sixty at the end of the seventh,” Dovie-Jean answered thoughtfully, “I’d go back of the grandstand and shoot myself.”

  “Don’t do it, honey,” Flash assured her gravely. “Don’t do it—keep in mind when you’re losing—your life don’t go with it. Your life don’t go with it—say it after me—”

  “Your life don’t go with it,” Dovie-Jean accommodated the simple fellow. “Your life don’t go with it.”

  “That’s right. Now I’ll tell you: Popular Victory may be closing—that was the tip I took and here comes Popular Victory, off at thirteen to one. I get two hundred eighty back for my twenty! I’m twenty ahead for the day! What do I do? What would you do?”

  “Get the hell out of there with my money,” Dovie-Jean assured the old sport.

  “Okay, then I’ll show you. I don’t even look at the odds this time. Just run my eye down the entries till I hit a number—nine. All Our Hopes. Don’t ask me why, I just go to the window and put that extra twenty on Hopes’s nose. I don’t look at the odds till I’m back to the rail. Nineteen to one! And the horses are entering the gate! Too late to switch my bet. All a sudden, as the flag goes up, odds on Hopes drop to fourteen to one. Last minute money! Somebody else believing in Hopes too! He breaks fourth, at the far turn he’s third and moving up.” Flash started to rise.

  “Stay in your saddle, Flash,” Spanish Nan commanded him, and he sat down once more and resumed. “He moves up to third, he’s running second at the turn for home and here he comes head and head down the stretch—he’s a nose, he’s half a length—he wins by a length and a half!” He grinned triumphantly all around the parlor.

  “I pick up three hundred twenty-eight dollars and eighty cents!” He took off his straw hat and, twirling it gently on one finger, began to sing in a rasping, not unpleasant old timer’s voice:

  Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends,

  Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends

  Mm, I’m gonna try with a little help from my friends.

  He wouldn’t leave the parlor now until he’d spent the greater part of his winnings. The women knew this and Big Benjamin knew it too. The old sport would send out for whatever they wanted—except booze. Big Ben never interfered because he’d make a twenty for bringing in the order.

  Flash no longer remembered how long he’d been following horses, but guessed it must be about as long as he’d been following women. Strangely, when he saw horses entering the gate, he felt almost the same excitement he’d first felt, so long ago. As, when seeing a woman undressing for him, he felt the same rise of passion as he’d felt it the first time he’d seen a naked girl.

  “Did I tell you about the time I hit a million-dollar daily double?” he asked Spanish Nan. Nan, disregarding the question, went to the slot machine, slipped in a quarter, and got nothing in return except a metallic “Pshdang!”

  “Did I say a million?” Flash persisted, turned to Dovie-Jean, “Five million! I hooked up a horse named Moon Red in the first with a filly named Jealous Widow in the second. Both short-price entries. Here comes Moon Red into the turn for home a head out front—and falls. He’d hit a hole in the track and broke his right foreleg. They had to shoot him right on the track. Here comes Jealous Widow a head out front into the turn for home—and falls. Same hole. Same leg. They have to shoot her right on the track. I ask you, how’s that for a daily double? Any bettor wishing to pick two horses in the double which won’t survive either race, will be paid ten million to one!”

  “I don’t know how many million-to-one that is, Mister,” Dovie-Jean assured him thoughtfully, “but I’m sure it’s better than even money.”

  Spanish Nan put in another quarter. All she got in return was, “Pshdang!”

  The whores’ indifference to his story didn’t trouble Flash. He went right on yakking of this and that, breaking off only to start singing, in a hoarse, off-key, somehow pleasant bass:

  Would you believe in a love at first sight?

  Yes, I’m certain that it happens all the time.

  What do you see when you turn out the light?

  I cant tell you, but I know it’s mine.

  “You got change for a dollar, Flash?” Spanish Nan asked him, and he gave her four quarters for a dollar.

  “Pshdang!”

  “Pshdang!”

  “Pshdang!”

  “Pshdang!”

  When she came back, offering another bill for changing, he took her hand. “Let’s save you some money,” he told her, and she led him into her room.

  Dovie-Jean sat idly on, a paperback book half-read on her lap and Flash’s program, from Aqueduct, marked and circled. Glancing into her handbag, she found a quarter. For lack of anything else to do, just to kill time, she rose and put it into the machine.

  She heard a far-off whirring as of gears within gears, then a rising note as a plane taxiing in down a runway. She stepped back as though to escape an explosion.

  It was. It did. “Pshdang! Pshdang! Pshdang! Pshdang! Pshdang!” A month of quarters poured forth so furiously, rolling across the whore-house floor and under the whorehouse divans, whirling into whorehouse corners as though some inner brake had slipped or broken and here comes Spanish Nan stark naked screaming, “My jackpot! My jackpot!” And sees Big Benjamin on his knees grabbing quarters right and left. ZAP! She kicks him from behind and he swings about without rising and grasps her knees. Down goes Spanish Nan head over heels and all the women screaming.

  Benjamin goes back to scrambling for quarters still on his knees, Nan mounts him, gets both hands into his hair and haul-haul-hauls his big gray head back while he waves his clenched fists wildly. When he got to his feet she put him up flat against the wall and emptied his pockets as he stood, making no protest, with his cap in his hand. Then Nan took Dovie-Jean’s handbag and poured her loot into it. Dovie-Jean stepped forward and opened her palm, revealing two quarters.

  “I guess these must be yours too.”

  Spanish Nan, having recovered her breath along with her jackpot, studied the two coins for a moment.

  “No, honey,” she told Dovie-Jean, “they’re yours. After all, it was your quarter.”

  Everyone turned their heads to Spanish Nan’s door: there stood Flash, naked as a baby, holding his penis in his hand.

  “What kind of a whorehouse is this, for God’s sake?” he complained.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Spanish Nan a
pologized, and moved him back into the room.

  “Be careful what you pray for, girls,” Big Benjamin gave them all warning from his shadowed corner, “you may get it.”

  Flash came out of Nan’s room, now fully dressed and looking cockier than ever. He did a loose-limbed jaunt around the parlor, passing out dollar bills to each of the girls as he passed, then put his head back and sang:

  Oh you trifling women

  You say you love your men

  When one leaves by the front door

  The back door lets a new one in.

  When Calhoun arrived in Buenos Aires to fight Rocky Olivera, the only sparring partner he could find was Dietrich Kroskauer, a German heavyweight who’d looked good against the best heavies in Europe. Calhoun knocked him cold, with a left hook, in their first round of sparring, although Kroskauer had been wearing a head protector. He packed his bags and took a flight back to Mannheim. Calhoun was left without a sparring partner.

  He cut off training a couple days before the fight and lost to Olivera by a split decision. When he paid his bill at Olivera’s hotel he found he’d lost again.

  Dick Lion had taken the middleweight title from Gardello. Calhoun signed to meet Lion at Madison Square Garden in December.

  “I know Dick Lion like a book,” Calhoun assured the press at his signing, “he’ll be easier for me than Gardello.”

  The following morning he drove to Doc Lowry’s gym, one flight up above the Italian-American Club. It was a dimly lighted room, lined by posters of old fight shows, with a roped ring in its center. A Puerto Rican was skipping rope in one corner. A black light-heavy was working combinations before a full-length mirror. Lowry was standing beside him when Calhoun came in.

  “I got a good-looking boy here, Ruby,” he told Calhoun. The light-heavy began punching more energetically.

  Lowry picked up fighters from all over the country and fought them up and down the Eastern Seaboard. He’d once tried to get Ruby from Yan Ianelli but Ruby had not been ready to make the move. Lowry had never yet had anyone to come close to a championship of anything.