“I don’t have to be here,” the old man informed him, “I committed myself.”
Red nodded.
“Because of the niggers. I committed myself to get away from the niggers.”
“How about you?” the old man asked.
“I wanted to get away from niggers too.”
“You always did.”
“I always did?”
“Don’t you remember when you used to take the mike and pretend to be Eddie Arnold, Red?”
A faint memory fled through Red’s mind.
“Oh, yes.” He stood up and began moving his mouth to the tune being played from above:
Don’t the moon look lonesome
Shinin’ through the trees …
“Sing it like you used to Red,” the old man encouraged him.
But the song faded, the memory gave out, the mime’s mouth ceased to move and he sat down, a faint blush spreading into his cheeks as he stared into his paper cup.
The little old man smiled as though he had won some secret prize and left in his bare feet, shuffling cheerfully among the mad and the half-mad and out the door.
Red waited for his attendant without opening his paper. He did not open it until he was back in his small room and the attendant had closed the door behind him. Then he checked the paper’s date, once again, with the calendar on the wall.
He spread the paper’s section out on his bed and sat in his armchair before them. He began stripping the business section first, into long, neat strips, When it was done he gathered the strips and put them into the waste basket. He took a drink of water then, and began on the sports section, and again put it carefully into the waste basket. And took another glass of water.
It was slow work, because each page had to be stripped neatly and scissors were not allowed. When he had finished the metropolitan section there remained only the news. This was the biggest section and it was almost noon before he had it done.
Once the attendant stood outside the door and listened. When he had heard the sound of tearing paper he had opened the door and asked courteously, “Excuse me, Edward, but is there some purpose in tearing the paper into strips like that?”
Red looked up and gave him a grave smile.
“Of course. They fit better into the waste basket this way,” and returned to his meticulous task.
“That’s the sanest thing been said around here in years,” the attendant’s supervisor commented when Red’s curious explanation had been reported to her.
Everything is different yet everything is the same.
The tavern that once was the Melody Bar and Grill is now the Aquarius Lounge.
The changes have been great. There had been no change at all.
The pool table remains in the middle of the room; but the players now are black. Budweiser ads still border the walls but the handsome young marrieds in them are, again, black.
The jukebox has forgotten the songs of the sixties. Now it plays “The Games That Daddies Play” and “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You.”
“Isn’t this the place that got into the papers some years back?” Kerrigan asked, sitting at the bar waiting for a beer.
The bartender was a black woman who had read Frantz Fanon.
“Maybe it is. Then again maybe it isn’t,” she replied, concealing her hostility beneath the guise of courtesy “We don’t know anything about this place when it was a white bar. I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”
“I heard there was a triple homicide in here.”
“Mister,” the woman came close to her white customer, “I don’t know what you’re after but you won’t find it here.”
“I just thought … ”
“When you finish your drink, mister, feel free to leave.”
A young black man, cue in hand, was holding the door open for Kerrigan.
Kerrigan grinned at him, smiled at the bartender and took his time finishing his drink. He gave the youth holding the door a broad wink as he passed him into the street.
“Thanks, buddy.”
All, all is changed. All, all is the same.
The sound of a revolver’s blast was faded across the years. The people who heard it are dead, jailed or gone mad. The old faces fade; new faces take their place.
All, all is changed.
And everything remains the same.
Also by Nelson Algren
Somebody in Boots
Never Come Morning
The Neon Wilderness
The Man with the Golden Arm
Chicago: City on the Make
A Walk on the Wild Side
The Book of Lonesome Monsters
Who Lost an American?
Notes from a Sea Diary
Conversation with Nelson Algren (with H.E.F. Donahue)
The Last Carousel
The Devil's Stocking Page 32
