Nelson Algren

It was night bright as day, it was day dark as night, but stuffed shirts and do-righties owned those shows. / For a Do-Right Daddy is right fond of money and still he don't hate fun. He charged the girls double for joint-togs and drinks, rent, fines, towel service and such. But before any night's ball was done, he joined in the fun. / Later he had to be purged of guilt so he could sleep with his wife again. That was where the pulpit came in. There had to be something official like that to put the onus on the women. The preachers, reformers, priests and such did this work well. Some girls were just naturally bad, they explained. Others were made bad by bad men. In no case was it ever the fault of anyone who profited by the shows. Daddy, you can go home again.

‘But,’ Finnerty inquired coolly, ‘Didn't it take some time to get used to being smaller than other people after you'd been the biggest thing in sight for so long?’ [...] Finnerty's tone was serene. ‘I don't pretend to compete with you. But Stoodint here now is something else – he'll out-stud any man alive, Big Dad.’ / Schmidt turned on Dove with a swerve of his wheels. ‘Can you do anything I can't do better, bum?’ / ‘I can't do lots of things even able-bodied men can do, mister,’ Dove hurried to say; and even to his own ears that didn't sound quite right. / ‘For example,’ Finnerty helped him, ‘he could never get work as THE LIVING HALF.’

The Southern nights grew cooler. The rain came every day. / Long after Hallie had gone to bed one night Dove sat alone on their balcony. Every time a breeze from the river passed, another of the lights below went out, till it seemed the breeze was blowing them out. When the windows both sides of the streets were darkened he turned up the lamp in the small room where she slept. / Across her face a shadow lay, leaving her mouth defenseless to the light. She slept on not knowing how the river breeze had just blown out the last of the lights. Nor how the rainwind was making their room cooler than before. / Nor yet how softly now the night traffic moved two stories down. And how all the anguish he had felt for his ignorance was gone for the first time in his life. And nothing mattered, it seemed in that moment, but that this woman should sleep on, and never know that the wind was blowing out the lights. / Somewhere in the court below someone began playing a piano softly, as though fearing to waken her.

The whole town was in drydock, the whole country in hock, but the pit of the Depression, a secretary of labor announced, was past at last. The President's stand on wages had averted an even worse slump, the secretary added, ‘Business is starting back.’ / ‘Nobody goes hungry,’ said Little Round Hoover, wiping chicken gravy off his little round chin. A man with the right stuff in him didn't need government help to find work. That would make him lazy. He might even get sick. Self-reliance for the penniless and government help to the rich, the Old Guard was in again. Hoover patted the chicken inside his own pot. ‘I got it made,’ said Little Round Hoover. / And in all those miles of wharves and docks the one boat still shipping water was a freighter under an Argentine flag and the proud Spanish title of Shichi-Fukujin.

Down in Houston's Mexican slum there stood, that June of '31, a three-story firetrap with a name: H O T E L / That's all: Hotel Hotel. / ‘Never did try sleepin' in a skyscraper afore,’ Dove looked up – ‘Whut do it costes here?’ / ‘Thirty-five cents apiece,’ Kitty informed him, ‘and some places go yet higher.’ / ‘In that case,’ Dove decided, ‘we'll have to find an inexpensive place.’ / ‘We get breakfast throwed in here though.’ / ‘What gits throwed?’ / ‘Mission donuts 'n coffee black.’ / ‘Then we're too far north.’ / Kitty tried to let it go but the temptation was too strong. / ‘How do you figure that, Red?’ / ‘When folks stop puttin' out liverpuddin' for breakfast, everyone's too far north.’

Finnerty, who looked like one of those little Australian foxes with ears half the length of its body, claimed to be five foot but had to be wearing his cowboy boots to make good the boast. / [...] / Oliver owned five women, a single-motored plane and a captive mouse. He claimed to be the first pander in the entire South to transport women by plane. A claim making every single one of the five proud of their five-foot daddy.

‘We're all a little on the odd side,’ Hallie guessed, ‘from the life we've led. The life we've all led.’ And taking his hand led him to the bed. / ‘I don't mean for you to love me,’ she had to tell him a minute after, ‘just hold me. Hold.’ / Dove held her, sensing only dimly that in holding her he was saving her.

A walk on the wild side.

‘The poorer people are the more likely they are to help you,’ Kitty told him the next morning after they had once again left engine and cars in charge of the crew. ‘Pick the first unpainted shack you see.’ / She followed Dove into a littered yard and waited while he rapped the door of a knocked-together-by-hand house the color of soot. A soot-colored wife came to answer.

That was no town for the aged or the aging. There was love behind the curtains and love behind the doors. Love in the squares and circles and love along the curbs. / Particularly along those curbs west of the Southern Railway Station. Where every window framed some love bird lamed in flight. Where every screen door was a cage. What had been Storyville was now an aviary. / [...] / From wheatland and tenement, hotel and harbor, girls and women of a hundred feathers had come to nest both sides of South Basin. Girls downy as chicks who have just lost their mammas and chorus-line dolls who had long lost their down. Girls who came scolding like winter jays, ruffing their tail feathers and ready for battle. But some like little wrens of summer, seeking hollows to hide in forever. / [...] / Birds of a hundred varied feathers, hooters, hissers, howlers, quackers – it was a new kind of zoo wherein the captured foraged for themselves.

‘My line of work, as you may have guessed, Tex, is women. Do you know anything about them?’ / ‘I know that if God made anything better I aint come across it yet, but that's as far as my knowledge goes.’

All he recalled clearly was opening the door the next morning and seeing a veil of mist so blue it blurred the outlines of house, hill and tree. And as the morning warmed the whole big blue world began to smoke faintly. / Louisiana. / In the long afternoon the clouds stacked. And still, over it all, that pale shifting veil. / A real southland haze in which one sees whatever one wishes to see. A haze that seeps behind the eyes and makes a wish-dream of everything.