Somebody in Boots. Nelson Algren
of his father’s face drain out, he heard his father’s breathing. He saw that Stubby was swaying a little, as though he too were drunk. Stubby’s eyes were almost closed, and his mouth hung wider than it did in sleep. Suddenly he seemed a big man, a tall man, bigger and taller than Bryan, even though Bryan was really inches the taller. He put a hand on Bryan’s shoulder so slowly that one might have thought he was going to speak to Bryan in friendly reproof—had it not been for his eyes being almost closed that way, and for the odd way that his mouth was hanging open. Stubby shook Bryan back and forth a little at first then, just a little at first; he didn’t want to hurt Bryan, he just wanted to shake him a little—Cass could see that by the way he was doing it. He just wanted to shake Bryan a little, for being drunk all the time.
Yet, just for a minute, Cass was so afraid for his brother that he thought he was going to cry. Then Bryan began giggling while Stuart was shaking him, and Cass saw how really funny it looked to see a person going back and forth through the air like that, in and out of a loose blue coat—back and forth through the air like a white-faced jack-in-the-box in a ten-gallon hat. Up and down, back and forth, in and out of a flopping blue coat.
Outside the wind came muling down.
Perhaps it was the laughter, the fool’s giggling that did it, for Stuart could not bear Bryan’s unmanly laughter. Smash between the eyes with his fist like a hammer he hit him, and Bryan only said “Ooof-oof.”
Cass smelled the terrible life-smelt of warm blood flowing; he faced around and saw Bryan’s features running together like water. Bryan wasn’t chuckling to himself anymore. He was just standing there with his nose squashed in, and with his back to the table, while Nancy tried to get in front of him before Stuart struck again. But Stuart shoved her away with his right hand and hit Bryan again with his left.
Stuart didn’t hit Bryan every time after that; his fists seemed to scrape and glance as though he could no longer see clearly. And Bryan just stood there trying to walk backwards like a crawdad, and one eye was closed and one white piece of tooth showed obliquely through his lower lip; blood came bubbling over that lip, and he couldn’t go any farther back because of the table behind him that wouldn’t quite fall over, so he dangled his wrists in front of his face as though thinking that this might keep Stuart from hitting him between the eyes like that again. Cass couldn’t hear a sound come out of Bryan’s mouth; it looked to him like a fish’s mouth, opening and closing. He saw Nancy trying to hold her father’s fist, and he saw that she was saying something to Stubby; but Cass couldn’t hear her words. Then Stuart hit Bryan twenty times ah at once; for just a moment after Bryan kept dangling his wrists in front of his face. Then the table slid slowly from under him, and he went over backward as it slid.
Cass saw him fall. He fell with the back of his head against a crate that had a faded picture of an orange on it. Cass saw this yet heard no sound. He saw Bryan struggling to rise and perceived that the left lapel of Bryan’s coat had been burned, sometime in the past, directly beneath the collar. The label bore a little round brown hole there, the kind of a burn that is most often made by a cigar or a cigarette stub.
And suddenly now his brother looked so terrible, Hopping in drunken helplessness there on the earthen floor, that Cass could bear to look no longer. Yet for one minute he could not tear his eyes away, for Stuart was not finished. He kicked Bryan in the groin with the toe of his boot. The flesh ripped, and tore. Cass saw it. Bryan lay with his head lolling against the sunkist orange, his knees bent and his legs wide. Between them Stuart’s boot had torn the cloth of the suit so that Cass saw clearly what Stuart had done. Stuart did not see. He kept kicking, kicking mechanically.
Cass’s mind went black and blank; he never remembered leaving the house.
When his senses collected he was walking slowly toward the S. P. water-tank with a resolution already reached in his mind never to go back. Even before he realized precisely where he was he had determined not to return. He had had enough of fighting and blood. He had had enough of cruelty. Always the sight of blood, or the mere thought of inflicting pain on another had revoked him. And now to see one man beating another, that man his own father, to see a helpless one beaten unmercifully, that one his own brother—this was beyond bearing. He was going somewhere now where men were somehow fess cruel. Some place where he would never see human blood helplessly spilling. He feared all blood; he dreaded men who spilled it.
Cass never became hardened to fighting. He was never to learn total indifference toward it. He was to live all his life among fighters, yet himself fight not once. He was to see men fight with guns and knives, with bare fists and with their teeth. All his manhood he would live with evil: with men who hated and mocked and fought, with strong men who were cruel to the weak, with men who were weak but were yet more cruel, and with men consumed with a wanton greed. Yet not once in his young manhood was he to see the shadow of pain cross a human face without being touched to the heart. He was never to see a blow struck or a man beaten, in all his young manhood, but he would be sickened almost to fainting.
CASS RODE ATOP a boxcar, watching the Texas hills roll by. “Leavin’ them hills now,” he kept telling himself, “lieavin’ ’em fo’ good an’ all—leavin’ paw an’ po’ Bry’n an’ sister.” And when he thought of Nancy his heart pained. But he was going to San Anton’ now, that big city where the army lived, and he wasn’t coming back. He was headin’ from San Anton’ to New Awlins, ’cause that was even bigger than Houston. Oh, he’d go everywhere now, everywhere he’d always wanted to go—Jacksonville, Shreveport, Montgomery and Baton Rouge. He’d see all the strange places he’d always wanted to see. He’d get tattooed like a sailor, all over his chest and arms.
As the train gathered speed and the night wore on the cold began to reach him; he climbed down into a gondola loaded with iron rails, seeking warmth there.
From sleep he woke with a sudden start, a warning heard in the jungle many months before ringing in his brain: “The wheels slipped on the track an’ two rails jolted loose an’ damn ef one didn’ go clearn through that Po’ boy’s belly . . .”
He climbed once more atop the boxcar, but his body had cooled from his brief nap and he could not bear the biting cold. Carefully then he worked along the spine of the cars, afraid to stand upright because of the wind. When he reached a box with a loose hatchway he crawled inside. It was an empty cattle car, the door was covered with straw. Cass heaped several dusty armfuls in a corner and fell to sleep with a wadded yellow newspaper under his head for a pillow. He was very tired.
When he awoke it was morning, and slant light was flashing past into the gaps between the car’s boarding. The train was approaching the yards in San Antonio, and he climbed out as it began to slow down.
Cass was gladdened and surprised to see a full twenty more ’boes come off with him, from several parts of the long van, and he fell in with them as they walked. All seemed headed for the same destination. Down the track a hundred yards they came to a frame house resembling a stable. Near the place, hunkered over wood fires, a dozen-odd men with empty faces waited. Cass paused before a sign on a fence, and spelled out a warning there; his lips moved as he read:
FREE SOUP KITCHEN AND CITY SHELTER—STAY OUT OF TOWN AND KEEP OFF ALL TRAINS NOT IN MOTION
He was suddenly aware that he was ravenously hungry.
As he was standing in line someone tapped his shoulder gently; he turned his head, and such a man as he had never before seen in all his life stood before him. A tall man in khaki, in glistening black boots, with badges and buttons, with red stripes and gold braid. And this apparition was speaking to him, Cass McKay.
“Boy, don’t you know you’re wasting your life?” it asked.
Cass cocked his head; he hadn’t known. He wanted to reach out one finger, to touch that bright braid.
“Riding the rods I mean—that’s wasting your life, ain’t it? The army makes men out of green kids like you.”
Cass grinned