A Walk on the Wild Side (21 page)

‘Was that before or after she killed herself?’ Fort inquired mildly.

‘I’m
plenty
worried about her,’ Luke implied darkly.

And went on the nod right where he sat, his Bottled-in-the-Barn just within reach.

‘Watch out for that carnival-talkin’ jailbird,’ Fort warned Dove the moment Luke began to snore. ‘He’ll talk a country boy like you into some fool operation and you’ll be the one to take the rap, mark my word. Watch out, goodbuddy.’

Goodbuddy promised he’d watch out.

As soon as Fort slept Luke opened one glimmering eye.

‘Ssssss –
Tex
,’ he whispered to Dove – ‘Watch out for that piss-complected faker. He’s been in every clink between Miami and Houston. He hollered on me so he’ll holler on you. Watch out, Tex.’

Tex promised to watch out.

‘That’s what I call a couple considerate fellows,’ Dove realized, ‘watchin’ out for my interests in shifts.’

One night Luke came banging and jangling in, trailing odors of seafood and gin. ‘Srimps! He’p yorse’ves, boys!’ He bounced a greasy bag on the table, put another nameless bottle beside it, fished two Spanish onions out of his pocket and invited everyone in town.

‘Don’t taste quite fresh,’ Fort grieved, filling his face, ‘taste a mite swivelly.’

‘The scripters says it’s a sin to eat anything that parts the hoof or don’t chew cood but I like srimps all the same,’ Dove reported.

Luke began stacking quarters and halves ostentatiously. Somebody had gotten rich fairly fast.

‘I’m jest eatin’ them because I need sustenance so bad,’ Fort explained, his voice round with self-pity – ‘two orangey icesticks just aint enough to sustain a man till evening.’

‘Take this for tomorrow’s sustenance then,’ Luke sent a quarter to him with a small disdainful finger-flick. Dove tightened lest Fort return the insult with his fist.

‘They don’t know how to make hot sauce in this town,’ Fort observed, pocketing the quarter as if he’d just earned it.

Orange ice stuck to his chin. Hot sauce colored his chops. Hairs stuck out of his nose and snot hung hard to the hairs.

‘You want one too, Tex?’ Little Luke had another quarter ready to roll.

‘Thank you kindly all the same,’ Dove declined.

‘I didn’t think so,’ Luke concluded without looking at Fort.

A shrimp’s tail had lodged between Fort’s teeth and he was having the devil’s own time prying the tip of it with his tongue.

‘Mighty funny they don’t clean these things before selling them to folks,’ he protested as if he’d paid double for something. Dislodging the tail at last, he spat it on the floor.

‘I
would
eat one of them ing-urns,’ Dove announced.

Luke looked confused.

‘He means one of
them
—’ Fort indicated an onion.

It was true enough that two orangey ices wasn’t enough to sustain a man like Fort till evening. It wasn’t enough to sustain Dove either. Yet each evening he announced, ‘I got to get a soon start in the morning. Will one of you fellers holler me up?’

And lugged a sample case into the day’s first light, telling half-awake housewives, ‘A Store at Your Door.’ Past the Confederate Veterans’ Home. A Store at Your Door down Humanity Street and up Gentilly Road. Rapping the front door or rapping the back down Peoples Avenue.

Peoples to Almonaster, front doors and rear. As the forenoon heat began to heap both sides of Spain Street down to the wharves.

By noon, with his case lighter only by sale of one jar of hair-straightener, he’d be sitting on the Desire Street dock admiring a ship from Norway or Peru with a big nickel bunch of bananas beside him and one little dry Spanish ing-urn.

Dreaming and peeling, Dove would recall all the storied shores he had almost seen. Through half-closed lids his thoughts rocked down, down the great river to the almost-sea. The masted and magic almost-sea. Rocking so far out on the dangerous waves it was really too far, and so would rock himself gently back to shore: the sheltering home-harbor shore. Where friendly street lamps lit the way to some old chili parlor door. And half-dreaming heard voices of women of his little lost town

—to Dove’s own homesick shore.

He would blink the bright tears from his eyes at last. No time to be homesick anymore. Scarcely time left for a man to rise. He would pick up his sample case and lug on, rapping a front door or rapping a rear. It couldn’t be too long now before some little good looker would invite him too into a fine old Southern home, serve him sweet potato pie too and say, ‘Big Fine Daddy, please stop runnin’ wild.’

But he only came to a great lonely house where a wan redhead of twelve or thirteen cried out at sight of his little store – ‘Granny! A man with
everything
we need!’ She seized a bar of tar soap ‘for my nappy old hair.’ A shoehorn for her nappy old shoes and cologne for her nappy old bath; a nail file, a comb, a compact – ‘There’s things
you
need here too, Granny!’ It looked to Dove like the sale of the year.

Till an old, old woman’s voice recalled the girl, and she returned looking more wan than before. And, kneeling silently, replaced every item she had taken from the case.

‘It’s awright, Miss,’ Dove reassured her, ‘Lots of ladies pick out things ’n then change their minds, times bein’ hard as they are.’

‘I didn’t
intend
to disappoint you,’ the child told him quietly. A nickel spun into the case, the screen door slammed, that old, old house stood sick and still.

‘You would of done better to take the soap,’ Dove reproached the empty porch and shut his case.

But pocketed the nickel. It would buy a cup of Southern coffee and a paper for Fort to read out loud to him.

He walked the endless Negro blocks to home because it was still day. He was suspicious of them by night or by day. What were they forever laughing about from doorstep to door that he could never clearly hear? Their voices dropped when he came near and didn’t rise till he was past earshot. Yet their prophecies pursued him—

Fort was lying on the high brass bed when Dove climbed the Tchoupitoulas Street stair that evening, just as Dove had left him that morning. A couple of noon cups had been added to the morning saucers, a few snipes to those on the floor. ‘Haven’t been able to stir the whole day,’ Fort sighed.

Yet Dove had the momentary impression he had just come in.

Dove handed him the paper and cleared the table and sink while Fort read aloud.

Fort crumpled the want-ads. What was the use of getting out a paper that didn’t tell who needed a Financial Counsellor?

The Financial Counsellor didn’t get up till the dishes were done.

‘I s’pose I got to go shop ’n sweat over the cook stove for y’all now,’ he informed Dove by his tone just what it was like to be imposed upon by everyone day after day.

‘Won’t we wait till Luke shows up?’ Dove suggested, ‘account all I got myself is one misly little two-bitses.’

‘He’ll come in drunk as a dog but he won’t have his rent money up,’ Fort made a safe guess.

‘That’s his turn, an’ he caint help it,’ Dove defended his friend.

Fort began frying something and after a while it must have been done, because he lifted two shapeless gobs into dishes and put both dishes down.

‘I’ll eat anything that won’t eat me,’ Dove announced, and dug right in, cupping his spoon in the palm of his hand before he even made sure the stuff was dead.

Fort gave him the even look.

‘You actually
like
this slop?’

‘You mean if I had my druthers? Why, if I had my druthers I’d druther eat speckledly gravy,’ Dove assured him.

‘You don’t actually mind living this way?’

‘It’s better than jail.’ Dove was sure.

‘That’s jest what I thought,’ Fort’s suspicions were confirmed – ‘You actually
like
this life.’

‘It’s the only life I got,’ Dove felt bound to explain.

Little Luke came in grinning with good news on his face and another newspaper under his arm. ‘We’ve just done turned that corner,’ he announced. ‘Didn’t I tell you times had to get worse before they could get better?’

‘Luke,’ Fort rose to tell him, ‘if we were standin’ around wonderin’ which one of us to eat first you still wouldn’t call times hard.’ Then he left to look for something to eat.

Luke skipped to his coat and brought forth a stack of green-margined certificates ‘entitling bearer to one free finger wave and shampoo at the Madam Dewberry Beauty Shop’ – he rattled off the larger print. ‘Now tell me, what woman in N’awlins don’t want a marcel wave and shampoo for free?’

Dove couldn’t name a single one.

‘Tell you what it amounts to, Tex – you’re handing that lucky gal the equivalent of a five-dollar bill.’

‘I am?’

‘You’re workin’
with
me on this, aren’t you?’

‘Would it be alright with Madam Dewberry?’

‘That’s my responsibility.’

‘Mighty obliged, Luke.’

‘All you have to do is watch out for telephone wires.’

‘Aint no plumb good at climbin’, Luke.’

‘Who said there was climbin’?’

Somebody’s step sounded on the stair and Luke ducked the certificates hastily into his coat. ‘Got a hundred more stashed under the steps,’ he lowered his voice and touched a finger to his lips – ‘Mum’s the word.’

Rapping with Luke was a lark. Instead of a heavy sample case all Dove had to carry now was a bundle of certificates, and didn’t have to climb a telephone pole after all.

‘I’ll have to wait to see what my husband says,’ his first prospect told him.

‘Reckon you’ll just miss your free wave ’n shampoo then, m’am. We aint comin’ by this way again. Fact is we’re almost out of certificates already. Only puttin’ out a hundred in the whole dern town.’

The woman studied the certificates with a married daughter beside her. ‘Seems just too good to be true,’ both frankly doubted him.

‘M’am, why don’t you just telephone Madam Dewberry and
veer
fy what I’m sayin’?’

Inasmuch as there was seldom more than one telephone to a block in New Orleans in ’31, the bluff was safe. She took one for herself and one for the daughter.

His second prospect had a harder head. ‘You wait here, young man – I
am
going to phone.’

‘Yes’m.’ Dove obeyed her.

But when she disappeared to primp for her trip to the corner grocer’s phone, Dove scurried to warn Luke off the block.

Luke took a swig from a half pint off his hip and didn’t feel the need to hurry anywhere. ‘Take your time, Tex.’

‘Here she comes now.’ Luke intercepted the hardheaded number.

‘Good morning, m’am. I’m the manager of the Madam Dewberry Beauty Parlor. My young assistant here reports you want to confirm this invitation. We
like
that. You’re the type of customer we’re looking for. If we can satisfy
you
, we can satisfy anybody. Don’t waste your nickel – I stand back of every word on this certificate.’ Luke drew one out of his pocket. ‘I’m not going to charge you even a quarter for this one, m’am.’

He put it in her hand.

‘I didn’t mean I wanted it for
nothing
,’ Hardhead protested.

‘If you want to pay the young man the courtesy fee of twenty-five cents, that’s purely optional.’

The woman handed Dove a quarter and returned to the house reading the smaller print.

The rest of the morning went easier. By noon twenty-five quarters jingled in Dove’s jeans and he still had twenty-five certificates for the evening.

But by evening Luke had invested his own quarters in a bottle of gin, so that before they had rapped many doors they were in no shape to rap at all. Toward midnight Dove heard horns and bells. They were helping one another down Tchoupitoulas and the whole dark city rang.

On their old stairs’ steep sad height Dove held Luke back.

‘I wonder did old Fort eat today?’

‘Let the sonofabitch starve,’ Luke pushed into the room. On the bed Fort lay with his face to the wall.

‘Shhhh,’ Dove cautioned Luke, ‘don’t wake him up.’

‘The sonofabitch been awake for hours,’ Luke decided, and shook Fort by the shoulders. ‘Hey! Good old buddy! Srimps! Fresh srimps!’

Fort turned about. Hunger kept glassing his eyes. He didn’t see shrimps. He didn’t smell shrimps.

‘Because there
aint
no srimps because we et ’em all, goodbuddy,’ Luke laughed with real glee and did a little taunting song and dance—

Dove remembered his own pockets and withdrew six cold shrimps wrapped in a paper napkin.

‘Here, Fort,’ and held them out over the sleeper’s face to show it wasn’t a joke after all. ‘As good-tasted a srimp as ever you et—’ Fort swung a hand and sent shrimps and napkin flying.

One ricocheted off the wall onto the bed. Dove picked it up and nibbled drunkenly at it, looking down at six and a half feet of self-pity huddled under a dirty patch quilt.

Hours later he was wakened by someone padding about. Luke was snoring in the chair. Dove saw a match’s flare. Then a kind of chewing-sucking sound. ‘I hope he finds them all,’ Dove thought and returned to sleep.

In the morning Fort had left.

‘I think he’s a mite fitified with us,’ Dove felt. ‘We hurt his feelings last night.’

‘His type feelings is hurt till they smell cookin’,’ Luke was certain. ‘Then they come runnin’.’