A Walk on the Wild Side (40 page)

‘Next time I seen her was after the operation. Nursed me back to life with her own two hands. Begged me to go through with the marriage just as if nothing had happened – that’s a
woman
for you. How was I to take advantage of unselfishness such as that? Her with her whole career before her? Ruin two careers because one had smashed on the rocks? I sent her away and been taking care of myself ever since, better than most with better luck than my own has been.’

‘But,’ Finnerty inquired coolly, ‘Didn’t it take some time to get used to being smaller than other people after you’d been the biggest thing in sight for so long?’

Was it the question or the pander’s tone? That Schmidt didn’t care for either was plain. ‘I don’t see nobody around
here
bigger than me,’ he looked right up at Finnerty as Dockery put three whiskies down and didn’t pick up his own. ‘If there’s anything you can do I can’t, now is your chance to tell me.’

‘Don’t be salty with
me
, Big Dad,’ Finnerty’s tone was serene. ‘I don’t pretend to compete with you. But St
oo
dint here now is something else – he’ll out-stud any man alive, Big Dad.’

Schmidt turned on Dove with a swerve of his wheels. ‘Can you do anything I can’t do better, bum?’

‘I can’t do lots of things even able-bodied men can do, mister,’ Dove hurried to say; and even to his own ears that didn’t sound quite right.

‘For example,’ Finnerty helped him, ‘he could never get work as THE LIVING HALF.’

So that was the bit. Out at last.

‘I wish you both joy of your trade,’ Schmidt told both, and wheeled off as noiselessly as he’d come.

Yet Finnerty called after, openly jeering, ‘If you aint champeenship material, might as well let the women get you now!’

Then pressing his finger hard into Dove’s chest – ‘You know who he meant by that “joy-of-your-trade” crack?
You
, that’s who. You don’t have to take it, Tex. I’m back of you.’

Dove emptied his own glass and Schmidt’s too.

‘I’m back of you, too, Oliver.’ And wished one of the glasses were full again.

‘And when I back a man I back him all the way. For as you know, Finnerty don’t fight. He just kills and drags out.’

Sometimes one of his glasses was full, sometimes both. In the bar mirror faces of people watched him too steadily. Along the bar faces of dolls watched the people. Faces of people and faces of dolls and his glass was full again. He had come to find somebody whose name was right on the tip of his tongue but just at that moment the juke began playing something about saints marching in. The people began marching behind the saints and the dolls behind the people as Dove began marching too. Where bells were ringing, trains kept switching, saints were marching, time was passing and his glass was full again.

Till a voice came down through the whiskey-mist saying no Linkhorn could read.

‘
Who
can’t read?’ he heard somebody asking ready to fight, ‘who
sayz
I can’t?’

‘Nobody said you couldn’t, son. Now be quiet or get out.’

‘Don’t talk like that to me, Ol-i-ver,’ he warned Finnerty.

‘This isn’t Oliver.’

‘Who you?’

‘Dockery, that’s who.’

‘And this is Big Stingaree, that’s who –
Who!
’

The floor tilted a little but he got hold of something and held, just held. Till the lights came up and there, with a small halo all around its edge, stood his own little whiskey glass filled again. For sheer love of whiskey, he began to cry. As dolls came marching, saints came marching, people were laughing. Through a Kewpie-doll jungle that had no end.

‘He’ll be alright, Doc,’ somebody who was the best friend anyone ever had told someone who wasn’t. He pulled at Finnerty’s sleeve to make him listen – ‘The people want me to make ’em laugh again, Ol-i-ver.’

‘Read ’em a kiddy-story out of your book.’

But the startled print leaped about like birds without brains, so whoever said no Linkhorn could read had been right after all, and everyone was so disappointed in him he began to cry for everyone, dolls or anyone, who had been disappointed in the end.

‘I’ll sing for the people! I’ll dance ’n sing!’ That was the solution, he realized, to everything. And supporting himself with one hand on the juke, he raised one big foot as if just to raise a foot like that in itself was a feat. And peered all around through the whiskey-mist to make sure the people were watching this. After all standing on one foot was something not everyone could do. He was the only one who knew
exactly
how it was done. They’d soon see that. Somebody applauded, now he had them. If he could just change to the other foot he’d bring down the house.

And slowly began to change feet.

He came out with his hands hanging loose and head swaying, bending forward so far he tottered a bit. Someone else clapped, then another and another. The dance went faster, foot to foot. Some saw love in it, some despair. Through a Kewpie-doll jungle the king of the elephants danced again.

He put his hands on his haunches and began a slow, obscene grind. The music stopped but nobody applauded at all.

‘Can that!’ someone protested, ‘there’s women here!’

‘Let him show what he got!’ Someone else saw things differently.

Then out of the whiskey-mist nearer and nearer Dockery’s eyes like those of a bee bent deep, too deep into his own.

‘Now you’re overdoing things, son. If you can’t behave, get out. I won’t tell you again.’

‘Who you?’

‘Dockery, that’s who.’ People began pushing this way then that, he had come to find someone but where was she at?
Who?
he kept asking, ‘
Who-who-who?
’ and pushed them all back – ‘Let me go. Who you?’ he asked them.

‘If we let you go you’ll fall on your head.’

‘Fall on my head –
that’s
what I want! I got a good header comin’ to me!’ And struggled madly to fall on his head.

But they wouldn’t let him, he couldn’t beg or buy them just to let him fall on his head. Bells began listening to their own fool tunes, trains to run right toward one another. Women were waiting in doorways for him. His glass was full again.

‘If you aint champ
een
ship mater’l,’ he announced, ‘might as well let the women get you now!’

‘He wants to let the women get him – let them
get
him then,’ all agreed.

‘Get him out of here,’ Dockery had had enough, and out the door in the middle of a mob of laughing panders, the feather of his hat bobbing higher than any, Dove stumbled still trying to get in his header. But every time was held up again.

By the time they got him next door to Mama’s his new suit-jacket was gone forever, one trouser was ripped from belt to knee, the shirt pocket hung by a single thread. Yet somehow he’d kept his hat, though its feather was broken.

‘Here comes Big Stingaree, ready to ball!’ one pimp called.

‘Come to let the girls get him!’ another explained.

‘We don’t want him,’ the girls seemed sure.

While in the doorway, faithful to himself, Oliver Finnerty stood and watched.

And felt his old nausea slowly subside.

When taxis wheel backward from the curbs and the darkness between the lights grows longer, when the whiskey in the glass before you is one whiskey you don’t want and the sky holds a sort of criminal glow full of longing and full of loss, then is that Come-here-and-tell-me-all-about-it, that Let-me-just-talk-to-you-mister-twenty-cents-will-see-me-through, that Hit-me-with-a-dime-and-I-sleep-under-blankets, that all-night pleaders’ hour. Then the pale lost ghosts of the girls in the night’s last doors – (how white their night-old hunger leaves them!) – see there’s no way left to keep the last of the lights from going out and even the pimps begin giving up.

The legless man smoked the first bitter cigarette of the coming day and watched the last of the two-leggers hurrying, hurrying; hurrying home to love and to rest. And a pang like a pang of utter defeat, like a wind off the flat ice plains of death passed over his heart and shivered it like a leaf.

So what if they had had a bit of a laugh on him? Worse things than that happened to people every day. A handicapped man had to learn to take the bitter with the sweet, it was part of the game and all of that. Everyone knew they were nothing but a pair of pimps of the cheaper sort while he himself had never yet taken a cent off a woman.

But dropped his eyes in a brooding dream to where his great thighs once had been.

And saw no way of getting his own life back, his own good life gone too far, too far.

One at the hip and one at the knee.

Why give
them
a chance?

What chance had anyone given him?

Whatever it was Floralee had done to make her think God could no longer bear her, it didn’t of necessity follow that He was the one who phoned for the Hurry-Up.

One moment the juke was beginning
Please Tell Me How Many Times
, the next the parlor was full of the boys in blue and someone smashed the glass of the juke – Now what was the need of that? But the song came on louder for lack of glass –
I’d feel bad if you’d kissed too many but I’d feel worse if you hadn’t kissed any
.

Where was Reba when the glass went out?

Praising the Chinese no doubt.

Where was Five when the box was smashed? Galloping from door to door in nothing more than her earrings and a bath-mat, hollering ‘Get them guys out!’ And rushing three tricks down the hall with their pants in their hands in as much of a hurry not to be witnesses as Five was anxious to prevent them. She shoved one out a window, another walked past a nabber with a bill in his hand, and the same nab said to another – ‘Uncle Charlie!’ And let him pass.

Where was Mama when the juke glass went? Studying a twenty-two-hundred-dollar receipt for down payment on a house and lot, six kennels and a pair of Doberman pinschers; and having her first misgivings.

Where was Finnerty when all this transpired? In a single-motor plane with two thousand two hundred in fives and tens, on his way to Miami to get his armpits tanned. And gnawing his nail with burning regret, asking over and over, ‘Oh, why didn’t I bury that crip?’

Where was Floralee all the while? Humbling herself in the sight of the Lord by supporting the length of a roaring drunk while other roarers encouraged him.

Where was Kitty Twist that lovable kid? Thinking of Finnerty and wishing she were dead. When she heard the crash she took a big swig of gin, tossed the bottle out the window and followed after it – right into the arms of two of them.

‘I just don’t have any luck, and that’s all there is to it,’ said tough Kitty Twist.

‘Your luck is as good as the next one’s I’d guess,’ the nab said, ‘Up you go, sis.’

And sure enough, up into the Hurry-Up went Kitty Twist. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked the paddy wagon gloom, ‘Who’s else takin’ this ride?’

‘It aint Herbert Hoover,’ Frenchy’s voice said.

‘Officer,’ Kitty Twist told the nab guarding the door, ‘What are you waiting for? We’re ready to roll.’

‘There may be others along in time,’ the officer said.

‘You only got one wagon for the good sake of God?’ Kitty scolded him.

‘We’re trying to make it in one trip, sis,’ he apologized, and a roar like a battle shout rocked the stars just then. The girls poked their sad fancy faces out and heard an iron clamor ring.

‘Sure sounds like someone don’t want to come along,’ Frenchy guessed.

Someone framed in a door-shaped light. Dove in an undershirt, nothing more, hollering ‘hands off me!’ Slamming right and left with the flat of a book, raging with whiskey and terrible fright. Kitty saw one nab catch it across the cheek – ‘Hands
off
I said!’ – another caught it smack in the eye. Then one of them clasped him by the nape of the neck, another caught his book hand. ‘Be a good boy like I was at your age,’ one said, and another yanked his legs right out from under. Then all three got a good firm hold – ‘One! Two! Three!—’ Kitty and Frenchy had just time to get out of the way as the bare-assed body came flying –
Bawnk
 – and Watkins’ ex-representative lay on his stomach clutching an iron floor.

‘At least this time you came along,’ Kitty congratulated him. And gave him a tentative dig with her toe.

The body never stirred.

Kitty found then she didn’t care really whether he came along or not. She didn’t care for anything or anyone, least of all herself. Anything that happens has a right to happen, so what does it matter who it happens to? That was how Kitty felt.

‘I heard a sneeze in the closet,’ the nab informed the girls, ‘and when I open the door, there was this boy buck-naked but for hat and undershirt and a book under his arm.’

‘Just somebody who didn’t have time to pull his pants on,’ Frenchy sounded out the law on how much he really knew.

‘So long as he wasn’t no inmate he aint in serious trouble,’ the nabber felt. ‘He don’t look to me like no pimp.’

‘Myself, I never seen him before,’ and gave Kitty the nudge.

‘I never did neither,’ Kitty Twist said.

Dove came to in a dungeon heat with something across his face.

Hello, pants.

He felt his head swell and subside, then try to swell again. By not so much as batting an eye it hurt a little less. When someone lifted the pants off his face he stared straight up. ‘I think the sonofabitch is dead,’ he heard an indifferent voice report and caught a whiff of cigar smoke.

‘I don’t see no blood, Harry.’

‘They bleed inside.’

‘Then we’re both in this together.’

‘
Both?
Since when did Smitty get out of it?’ The pants dropped back.

‘Why, that’s
right
. Oh, that Smitty, suppose to be watchin’ the whore in the Hurry-Up, instead he’s showin’ off he’s a tackle now for L.S.U.’