‘I don't mind getting roughed up, everybody gets roughed up. Everybody, in jail or out, is shaking somebody… — Nelson Algren
‘I don't mind getting roughed up, everybody gets roughed up. Everybody, in jail or out, is shaking somebody else's jolt. The thorn that sticks my side to this day is the one time in my life I was innocent was the one time that I got it.’ [...] Whatever happened, it was Country's consolation, he had Broomface where it pinched. He owed so much time here and there that even were he to serve it concurrently, he was sure to die owing at least fifty years. They'd never be able to collect.
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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.
