‘Who you?’
‘Dockery, that’s who.’
‘And this is Big Stingaree, that’s who – Who!’
The floor tilted a little but he got hold of something and held, just held. Till the lights came up and there, with a small halo all around its edge, stood his own little whiskey glass filled again. For sheer love of whiskey, he began to cry. As dolls came marching, saints came marching, people were laughing. Through a Kewpie-doll jungle that had no end.
‘He’ll be alright, Doc,’ somebody who was the best friend anyone ever had told someone who wasn’t. He pulled at Finnerty’s sleeve to make him listen – ‘The people want me to make ’em laugh again, Ol-i-ver.’
‘Read ’em a kiddy-story out of your book.’
But the startled print leaped about like birds without brains, so whoever said no Linkhorn could read had been right after all, and everyone was so disappointed in him he began to cry for everyone, dolls or anyone, who had been disappointed in the end.
‘I’ll sing for the people! I’ll dance ’n sing!’ That was the solution, he realized, to everything. And supporting himself with one hand on the juke, he raised one big foot as if just to raise a foot like that in itself was a feat. And peered all around through the whiskey-mist to make sure the people were watching this. After all standing on one foot was something not everyone could do. He was the only one who knew exactly how it was done. They’d soon see that. Somebody applauded, now he had them. If he could just change to the other foot he’d bring down the house.
And slowly began to change feet.
He came out with his hands hanging loose and head swaying, bending forward so far he tottered a bit. Someone else clapped, then another and another. The dance went faster, foot to foot. Some saw love in it, some despair. Through a Kewpie-doll jungle the king of the elephants danced again.
He put his hands on his haunches and began a slow, obscene grind. The music stopped but nobody applauded at all.
‘Can that!’ someone protested, ‘there’s women here!’
‘Let him show what he got!’ Someone else saw things differently.
Then out of the whiskey-mist nearer and nearer Dockery’s eyes like those of a bee bent deep, too deep into his own.
‘Now you’re overdoing things, son. If you can’t behave, get out. I won’t tell you again.’
‘Who you?’
‘Dockery, that’s who.’ People began pushing this way then that, he had come to find someone but where was she at? Who? he kept asking, ‘Who-who-who?’ and pushed them all back – ‘Let me go. Who you?’ he asked them.
‘If we let you go you’ll fall on your head.’
‘Fall on my head – that’s what I want! I got a good header comin’ to me!’ And struggled madly to fall on his head.
But they wouldn’t let him, he couldn’t beg or buy them just to let him fall on his head. Bells began listening to their own fool tunes, trains to run right toward one another. Women were waiting in doorways for him. His glass was full again.
‘If you aint champeenship mater’l,’ he announced, ‘might as well let the women get you now!’
‘He wants to let the women get him – let them get him then,’ all agreed.
‘Get him out of here,’ Dockery had had enough, and out the door in the middle of a mob of laughing panders, the feather of his hat bobbing higher than any, Dove stumbled still trying to get in his header. But every time was held up again.
By the time they got him next door to Mama’s his new suit-jacket was gone forever, one trouser was ripped from belt to knee, the shirt pocket hung by a single thread. Yet somehow he’d kept his hat, though its feather was broken.
‘Here comes Big Stingaree, ready to ball!’ one pimp called.
‘Come to let the girls get him!’ another explained.
‘We don’t want him,’ the girls seemed sure.
While in the doorway, faithful to himself, Oliver Finnerty stood and watched.
And felt his old nausea slowly subside.
When taxis wheel backward from the curbs and the darkness between the lights grows longer, when the whiskey in the glass before you is one whiskey you don’t want and the sky holds a sort of criminal glow full of longing and full of loss, then is that Come-here-and-tell-me-all-about-it, that Let-me-just-talk-to-you-mister-twenty-cents-will-see-me-through, that Hit-me-with-a-dime-and-I-sleep-under-blankets, that all-night pleaders’ hour. Then the pale lost ghosts of the girls in the night’s last doors – (how white their night-old hunger leaves them!) – see there’s no way left to keep the last of the lights from going out and even the pimps begin giving up.
The legless man smoked the first bitter cigarette of the coming day and watched the last of the two-leggers hurrying, hurrying; hurrying home to love and to rest. And a pang like a pang of utter defeat, like a wind off the flat ice plains of death passed over his heart and shivered it like a leaf.
So what if they had had a bit of a laugh on him? Worse things than that happened to people every day. A handicapped man had to learn to take the bitter with the sweet, it was part of the game and all of that. Everyone knew they were nothing but a pair of pimps of the cheaper sort while he himself had never yet taken a cent off a woman.
But dropped his eyes in a brooding dream to where his great thighs once had been.
And saw no way of getting his own life back, his own good life gone too far, too far.
One at the hip and one at the knee.
Why give them a chance?
What chance had anyone given him?
Whatever it was Floralee had done to make her think God could no longer bear her, it didn’t of necessity follow that He was the one who phoned for the Hurry-Up.
One moment the juke was beginning Please Tell Me How Many Times, the next the parlor was full of the boys in blue and someone smashed the glass of the juke – Now what was the need of that? But the song came on louder for lack of glass – I’d feel bad if you’d kissed too many but I’d feel worse if you hadn’t kissed any.
Where was Reba when the glass went out?
Praising the Chinese no doubt.
Where was Five when the box was smashed? Galloping from door to door in nothing more than her earrings and a bath-mat, hollering ‘Get them guys out!’ And rushing three tricks down the hall with their pants in their hands in as much of a hurry not to be witnesses as Five was anxious to prevent them. She shoved one out a window, another walked past a nabber with a bill in his hand, and the same nab said to another – ‘Uncle Charlie!’ And let him pass.
Where was Mama when the juke glass went? Studying a twenty-two-hundred-dollar receipt for down payment on a house and lot, six kennels and a pair of Doberman pinschers; and having her first misgivings.
Where was Finnerty when all this transpired? In a single-motor plane with two thousand two hundred in fives and tens, on his way to Miami to get his armpits tanned. And gnawing his nail with burning regret, asking over and over, ‘Oh, why didn’t I bury that crip?’
Where was Floralee all the while? Humbling herself in the sight of the Lord by supporting the length of a roaring drunk while other roarers encouraged him.
Where was Kitty Twist that lovable kid? Thinking of Finnerty and wishing she were dead. When she heard the crash she took a big swig of gin, tossed the bottle out the window and followed after it – right into the arms of two of them.
‘I just don’t have any luck, and that’s all there is to it,’ said tough Kitty Twist.
‘Your luck is as good as the next one’s I’d guess,’ the nab said, ‘Up you go, sis.’