Free A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren Page B

Hasteth! Little-Time-to-Repent! Old-Cut-Off-Your-Nose-to-Spite-Your-Face – if you’d but hasted me to school instead of playing Gawd for a pack of utter fools I’d have a readin’ ’n writen trade tonight.’
    With each draw he rose another inch off the floor.
    ‘Buggy old Just-As-I-Am’ – suddenly, the stick dangling from his lip, he crossed himself and genuflected, though his knees touched nothing.
    ‘Pump
that
out of your hose, old man,’ he told Fitz – ‘let that do fer you, Hell-’n-Brimstone.’
    Here was her bedside, here was her bed. Of late she had lain here restless or dreaming and soon would lie dreaming again.
    Between the white kerosene lamp’s glow and the virgin’s flickering yellow, he looked at the words of the story that told HOW A GOOD MAN IS ALWAYS RIGHT, for he knew that one by heart:
‘“Always going downhill, and always merry! That’s worth the money.”’
    The tip of his narrow cigarette danced like a tiny ballerina in the dark. He turned the page to where the Eastwind, dressed like a Chinaman, told the Prince to hold tight or he might fall.
‘“Oh, have you come from that quarter?” said the mother, “I thought you had been in the Garden of Paradise.”
    ‘“I am going there tomorrow,” said the Eastwind. “It will be a hundred years tomorrow since I have been there. I have just come from China, where I danced round a porcelain tower till all bells jingled. The officials were flogged in the streets. The bamboo canes were broken over their shoulders and they shrieked, ‘Many thanks, Father and Benefactor,’ but they didn’t mean what they said. And I went on ringing the bells and singing ‘tsing, tsang, tsu!’”’
    A scent of the Orient came to him. He left the book and followed his nose, sniffing like a rabbit, right up to a bureau drawer.
    A chiffon blouse, a white slip frayed at the hem and a black brassiere like the vestments of some holy order. Dove felt of them with that special reverence of men who have lived wholly apart from women. Under these clothes, it came to him like a mystery, the señora walked naked. The realization weakened him so that he sat on the bed’s edge with the slip lying limp across his knees and stroked it as if it were her flesh. In the nippled cup of the black brassiere he smelled her special smell, like that of
Russian Leather
.
    Here her breast had fitted – why it must be softer yet than this! And tested the garment’s texture against his leathery cheek.
    Señora, let me touch your naked heart.
    A yearning deep as need can go stretched him onto his stomach, clasping her slip to his chest. Pressing the pillow where her head had lain, his limbs convulsed and a dizzying surge left him limp as the slip. Sweating and passionless, guilty and spent, the boy lay a long moment with shuttered eyes. This had never happened to him before while waking.
    ‘That’s purty fair pot,’ Dove thought.
    And fell into a snoring sleep.
    To dream he was coasting gently about a county fair merry-go-round as he had once seen four small monkeys coast. Strapped tight into toy autos, each wearing a jockey cap matching the color of his car, one red, one green, one yellow and one blue; while about the guard rail people crowded and leaned – he touched the peak of his own cap to make sure it wouldn’t blow off when the big race began—
Just as I am! Just as I am!
    the music began with the happiest bang.
    Now he was losing ground, now gaining – now he was almost out in front. O – Hasteth! Hasteth! From his father’s shouting face he saw Eyeless Riley’s skull emerge – the dream wheel tipped straight up, the rails slipped sidewise and out from under.
    ‘Señora! Save me from Riley!’
    He sat in the middle of the floor with the pillow still clasped to his chest. Above him the virgin burned bright. Beside him the stove burned low. Down the dark road Negroes foretold and foretold—
O hush, one mornin’
Death come creepin’ in the