Read Online A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren - Free Book Online Page A

thighs start to part. A look half anguish and half shame made his face go gray and he sank to the table with his head on his hands. She saw his shoulders tremble as the music died all around.
    When she touched his shoulder he gave her a smile that suffered too much, that pulled at her heart like an animal’s plea.
    Holding the fingers of her left hand together, away from the thumb, she sprinkled salt on the stretched tendon and licked it up with her quick small tongue.
    ‘You must get yourself a girl,’ she announced as though salt had made her suddenly wise. And held the salt of her hand out to him, that he might become wise as herself. He pinched a speck of it, gave it to his tongue, thought for a moment and decided, ‘There aint no girl in this whole fool’s valley worth a second look.’ Then, swallowing the salt at last, had a cunning afterthought: ‘’ceptin’ yourself of course, Señora.’
    ‘Well,’ she pretended not to have heard the afterthought, ‘it is true things here are not so good. But if just this one little part of the world had everything, pretty girls and good crops too, bad men would come from the bad parts of the world bringing ugly daughters. Then things would not be so good as they are now. So it is good things are not so good.’
    That night Terasina slept poorly. Half in sleep and half in waking she saw the smile that suffered too much.
    A week before Christmas she gave him the key to the
Fe
, to play caretaker and watchman for her till she should return. She could not always go home when her heart was troubled. But this year the trouble came at Christmas, providing her with a pious excuse.
     
    Through the drought of 1930, when old friends’ pennies counted most, merchants tossed Kiwanian greetings from all the doors of the little town’s stores, and smiled, smiled, smiled. But when the drought was relieved and tourists Matamoros-bound again began to get lost between the curio shop and the post office an hour, they were much too busy to smile. Business was business and time became money then.
    The barefoot men and boys in overalls would walk around some tourist’s Buick, pointing its advantages to one another so solemnly that it seemed the days of walking from place to place must be over for everyone. Had anyone thought of letting the air out of the tires he would have been prevented, for their interest was proprietary. What they hoped for was many miles per gallon, no nicks on their fenders, contented journeying and no blowouts.
    They knew they came from the wrong side of a town that had only two sides, the wrong and the wronger, so strangers with loose cash must be shown respect. And if the women in the cars with the Eastern licenses seemed more prideful than common, that was only agreed to in Spanish, that courteous tongue.
    To this lost place the Depression arrived as a sort of modest boom, bringing a relief station and a case worker that caused a dozen wetbacks to wade back across the river. ‘More fried yams for the rest of us,’ old friends wished them indifferent luck.
    Shambling down Main Street one bleak evening, Dove noticed the pharmacist idling in front of his shop wearing the face that said, ‘Keep moving, Useless. Business is Business.’
    Useless kept moving, for business
was
business.
    Useless always kept moving until he was told to stand to one side. Then he stood to one side until told to start moving. All weathers to Dove were a single season in which he moved or stood unwanted.
    On the courthouse steps Fitz was playing the fool for the same gang of cactus-headed rundums for whom he always played the fool. Byron was leaning against the howitzer as though too exhausted tonight to mount it.
    ‘Preacher,’ asked a hungry-looking misfit, stooped as under a pack, ‘is it right for a man’s wife to bob her hair?’
    ‘Go to Deuteronomy,’ Fitz promised, ‘your answer is there.’
    ‘But I don’t
feel
it’s wrong,’ the wife’s voice defied