‘Dear friends and gentle hearts,’ [the King of the Turtles] wigwagged, feeling the final cold creep up –… — Nelson Algren
‘Dear friends and gentle hearts,’ [the King of the Turtles] wigwagged, feeling the final cold creep up – ‘Will you stand by to leave your old friend die? I wanted nothing for myself – money, comfort, power, security – I worked for these only because those dear to me wanted them. (Of course, as long as they were handy I shared them from time to time.) Would you really leave me here to die? / True, I ate well. But that was only to keep up my strength for the sacrificial ordeal of my days. For I never knowingly harmed a fellow creature unless he got in my way. I never took unfair advantage unless it profited me. Can you really leave so lovely a turtle to die? / A devoted father, a loyal citizen, a faithful employee, a kind employer, a considerate neighbor, a regular church-goer. Out of purity of heart I respected the laws of God and man. Purity, and fear of jail. Could you really stand by and watch so saintly a turtle die? / I seemed a bit intent a moment ago, you say, on grinding my brothers' necks to gristle? I confess – but that was a moment ago, and now I've changed my ways. Could you bear to see such an open-minded turtle die?’
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More from this book
There, in Dockery's Dollhouse [...] a straight-haired flat-chested hard-of-eye hustler called Tough Kitty was trying to get credit for just one little beer. / But the bartender, acting as oddly as , didn't seem to hear. / [...] / So she drew from the pocket of her faded blue jeans a small change-purse and emptied it on the bar: twelve pennies and one nickel. / ‘I got enough for a beer,’ she took count, ‘but not enough to get drunk on.’ And looked left-out of everything.
‘I feel like I been everywhere God got land,’ Dove thought, ‘yet all I found was people with hard ways to go. All I found was troubles 'n degradation. All I found was that those with the hardest ways of all to go were quicker to help others than those with the easiest ways. All I found was two kinds of people. Them that would rather live on the loser's side of the street with the other losers than to win off by theirselves; and them who want to be one of the winners even though the only way left for them to win was over them who have already been whipped. / ‘All I found was men and women, and all the women were fallen. Sports of the world, poor bummies, poor tarts, all they were good for was to draw flies I was told. You could always treat one too good, it was said, but you never could treat one too bad. Yet I wouldn't trade off the worst of the lot for the best of the other kind. I think they were the real salt of the earth.’
Another was an old sad lonesome lecher with a face that had never been up from the cellar, who had nobody's sympathy at all; not even his own. The turnkey had nicknamed him ‘Raincoat’ – which was kinder than what the prisoners had named him. / This ancient simple satyr's offense had been nothing more dreadful than the devising of a time-and-money-saving operation. [...] Here and there, passing some woman who appeared deserving, he would fling the raincoat wide for her amazement and delight, then modestly button himself and modestly hurry on. / Talent can spring up anywhere.
