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

Deuteronomy.
    Fitz’s eyes sought her out. ‘Woman, did you ever get down on your knees and ask
God
if it was wrong?’
    ‘No I didn’t, Preacher.’
    ‘When you do He’ll let you know. If He wanted a woman to cut off her hair he’d have her to shave too, wouldn’t he?’
    There didn’t seem to be any answer to that.
    ‘How fast do angels travel?’ was the next issue Fitz had to solve. That was easy.
    ‘Why, an angel can leave the New Jerusalem at six o’clock in the morning, travel all
over
the earth, and be back home at six in the evening where the lion
doth
lie down with the lamb. Heaven just at hand! Where neither moth nor rust do corrupt! Where thieves break not through nor steal. No sickness! No pain! And a thousand years is as a single day!’
    ‘What’s the fool rushin’ to get home by six o’clock then?’
    Fitz ignored Byron.
    ‘There
is
balm in Gilead! No wreaths of sorrow on the doors – and the doors is all pure gold! Pure gold!’ The old man bethought himself – ‘Only don’t you count on that – nobody is going to be fool enough to mistake a bunch of chicken-thieves like you for angels. No, my pitiful friends, what’s in store for
you
aint no New Jerusalem.’
    ‘Good old Hellfire fer us, Preacher,’ a believer sounded like he could scarcely wait.
    ‘Hellfire
too
good for us!’ – someone else trying to get in good with the preacher for sake of his Kill-Devil.
    ‘We aint
wuth
Hellfire!’
    They overdid everything. For they knew Fitz put The City of Pure Gold within their reach only for the pleasure of snatching it back.
    And actually they didn’t give a hoot for any city of gold. Desolation here and now,
that
was their dish. Blazing brimstone, eternal torture and a backhanded crack from the hindquarters of bad luck was what they lusted for. Though they never really believed his promise of Heaven Just At Hand, nothing was surer to them than Hellfire. And it took Fitz to lead them straight to its screeching brink. The preacher knew where the real action was all right.
    With the passion of one who has been there and back, Fitz brought them closer and closer to the unspeakable edge—
    ‘Un-
utter
-uble sorrows is in store for all,’ he gave his holy word – a Santa Claus with nothing save horrors in his sack, hollowing every syllable to make Hell so imminent they could scarcely await their turn on the spit. ‘Un-
utter
-uble sorrows! Un-
dying
Damnation! Ut-
ray
-jus visi-tay-shuns! Invasion by an army! A army of lepers! Two hundred million of flame-throwen cavalry! A river of blood and burnen flesh a hundred mile long! Seven month jest to bury the dead! A army comen! A leper army!’
    ‘Army-Gideon!’ one idiot was carried completely away. Oh, they loved those leper mounties so they scarcely knew which side to join first. It didn’t matter: no cause was too mad so long as the action was fast and the field bloody. Swept, they were swept by the enormous loneliness of their lives up to the very gates of the golden city, then swept clear back to the burning plains of Damnation. An action so fast it permitted no moment wherein to take breath and look within. To look within at their own hearts, so dark so empty just as hearts.
    ‘Mothers to eat the flesh of their new-born! A time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation
even unto that same time!
    ‘Hailstones big as blocks of ice! Tawr’nts of bloody fire! Fountings ’n rivers turnen to foaming blood! El Paso buried under red-hot lava!
Now
you poor sorry buggers you’re really going to catch it.’
    ‘How about New York?’ some people never wanted to go anywhere alone.
    ‘Buried in a rain of toads! Toads big as cats to Wall Street’s topmost tower!’
    Wall Street had all the luck.
    ‘Every island shall flee away and the mountings will not be found! Fly or die! All who worship Jehovah will have to receive the mark of the beast or die! Walls of bricks and walls of steel staved in by hailstones weighing