Somebody in Boots. Nelson Algren
ten-year-old. He had many friends, and they were all roaring boys. Usually when he returned from town he had a pint of tequila on his hip.
He would sit in some dark corner of the house, tippling half-secretly. Often no one would know that he had returned from town till they heard him tittering to himself, or humming through his teeth from some nook. Sometimes, when well in his cups, he would sing. He would wail a half dozen lines over and over again, each time with a different rhythm:
They say I drink whisky; my money is my own,
And them that don’t like me can leave me alone.
Oh whis-key, you vil-lain, you’ve been my down-fall,
You’ve kicked me, you’ve cuffed me,
But I love you for all.
Then he would titter. He had been gassed at St. Mihiel.
Stuart alone remained outwardly unaffected by these days. All day he slept, each meal he ate alone just as though he were still working on the Santa Fe. Promptly at six pm, as ever, he would pull on blue overalls over his boots and leave down the road toward the roundhouse.
Once there he kept to deep night-shadow, he encircled the wide glare of the floodlights, he avoided anyone whom he saw approaching him. Standing concealed behind some dead engine, he watched the man who had taken his job.
Every night Stubby watched Luther Gulliday. Just before dawn he would start back, and Cass would be wakened by the flare of a match in the early dark. Stuart would be bending over the living-room table trying to light the old-fashioned lamp; but the wick had been dry for a long time, it would never light, the match would burn out on the bare dirt floor. Every morning Stubby tried to light the lamp, he never seemed to remember that it was dry; he seemed unable to understand why the wick would never flare. And Cass would see the fierce gash of his father’s mouth in the match’s glow, the straight line of the lips and the long jaw below it; the flickering flower of fire on Stubby’s high cheek bones made the face look like a yellowing death’s head, suspended in space.
“How ugly my father is!” the boy would think then, wondering whether he himself had a face that looked as long as a small horse’s, all bespattered with freckles and soot.
With Nancy there was more than hunger. There was shame, and a growing despair at the meanness of her daily tasks, unrelieved by little save hymning on Sunday nights, or by small gossip with some other ragged girl after the pans and pots had been cleaned. On the streets she became so bitterly conscious of her outworn dress and her run-down heels and her stockingless legs that she ceased altogether to go into the American quarter of town. Only rarely would she leave the house to go farther than the dooryard.
Even to go to the relief station for supplies she disliked to leave the house. It became Cass’s duty to go there because of her dislike for the task. Bryan had friends in the town to feed him, and he cared little whether Nancy ate or not. But once, when black-eyed peas were being distributed by the charity station, Cass became stubborn and refused to go. He said that it was now Bryan’s turn, and said it so peremptorily that, at the last, Bryan made a pretense of going. He returned very shortly, empty-handed, saying that the agent had refused to help them any longer. Cass became uneasy and went to inquire, and so learned that Bryan had not been to the station.
Cass used to wonder about Bryan, watching him. He wondered how it would feel to be Bryan just for one day. Was there no way to learn how someone else felt? What was it that went on inside of heads all the time? Cass watched people, wondering about all of them. Could no one else know how he himself was inside, what went on inside his head? Sometimes in the morning when he arose he was sick almost. For was there never anything else but killing and cursing, sleeping and eating, drinking and fighting and working and cheating, day after day, for all men? Was this all that poor peopie did? Did everyone, everything, cats and hawks and men and women—did all of these live only to eat, fight and die? Even if no one chased them, kicked them or wrenched off their heads—did all of these die just the same? And when would he himself come to death? All through his boyhood Cass was never quite free of a sense of imminent death. All his boyhood he asked himself, “What else is there? Why?” It seemed to him then that in being a man there might be something more.
“Ah’d like to get out of this pesthole,” he thought. “Ah’d like to see New Awlins.”
And there came a morning in late October that Cass never forgot. Above the roof the sky was gray, and clouds like hands were pressing down. Stuart was sitting on the back porch when Cass got up that morning. Bryan had not come home the night before-hand Stubby was watching the road for him. He had not been to bed yet, and he had not eaten his morning oatmeal. Sometimes as he sat he would look down at the toes of his boots, then he would scuffle the toes together, regard their scarred leather a minute, and raise his eyes toward the road once more.
Cass was eating bread and rice when he heard Nancy’s whisper: “When y’all git through eatin’, go awn up the road a space an’ head off yo’ brother, do y’ see he’s again cornin’ weavin’-like.”
Cass toyed with the water in his coffee cup, and arranged crumbs in a pattern about the rice-bowl. Then he heard the porch door slam, and he thought that his father had left—till he heard his voice. And because his father’s voice held a strangely complaining ring, Cass knew that he spoke to Bryan.
“Now where y’ git it this time, eh? Ah tell’n thet Luke twicet now not to give it yo’ any mo’. Who give it yo’, eh? Give me over thet devil bottle.” Cass heard his brother bawling, “Ah’ll eat when ah’m hongry, ah’ll drink when ah’m dry”—and the song was broken by the tinkling of glass breaking against a stove-lid. They were both in the kitchen then.
“Ah’ve right t’ drink, ah have. Ah needs drink. Ah’m a sick man an’ ah works fo’ mah whiskey.”
Cass didn’t know what Bryan meant when he said he worked to get whiskey. And when Stuart spoke it was as though he did not realize that Bryan was drunk at all.
“Yo’ elegant lyin’ son-of-a-bitch, y’ ain’t done lick o’ toil goin’ on eight year. Ah knowed yo’ was wuthiess first time ah seed yo’, yo’ weren’t never nachrai. Yo’ was bo’n with a caui an’ been off plum evah since.”
Bryan chuckled warmly, as though he and Stuart were sharing some excellent jest together. Bryan felt joyous inside, he was bubbling there, he felt as though he and his father ought to laugh over something together. He walked into the living room, flopped down on the chair in the corner and tilted leisurely against the wall.
Stubby followed, and Cass sat frozen over the careful pattern of brown crumbs on the faded green oilcloth.
“Ah ast yo’ what yo’ mean—yo’ works?”
Bryan laughed boyishly up. Then he put his hand in his pocket and withdrew a dollar bill and a quarter. He wagged the bill under Stubby’s nose, and tossed the quarter at Cass, and laughed so unrestrainedly that Cass had to raise his eyes.
He saw how smoky it was in the house. Smoky and dark. A dry wind whimpered about the east corner, like a child whimpering in sleep. Cass remembered being wakened in the night by the sound of low sobbing. He heard Nancy come into the doorway behind him, heard her feet pause there, knew that she too was afraid for her brother.
Bryan tilted forward in his chair and went to the center of the room on legs that knocked against each other like a pair of bone clacking-sticks. Stubby stood with legs spread wide, following Bryan now only with his eyes. Bryan leaned against the table with one hand and waved his dollar with the other, cheering it as though it were a flag; then his supporting hand slipped an inch, and the water in Cass’s coffee cup slopped over the cup’s brim onto the table.
As though seeing his father for the first time, Bryan began trying to focus his eyes upon him, wagging his head foolishly from side to side in the effort.
“W-well h-hell-oooo there,” he stammered,—“Ol’ nigger-finger.” He extended the dollar to Stuart.
“Heah,