‘The darker the valley the more the spirit of Christ-like charity appears,’ said that same cardinal in that strange brief spring, and New Orleans began planning a beer parade.
There, in Dockery’s Dollhouse while the juke played
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 Hoover, didn’t seem to hear.
‘Did my husband leave owing you money or something?’ she wanted to know. ‘Is that what’s making you so salty over a simple deal like a glass of green beer?’
‘If you’re talking about a party name of Finnerty,’ Doc advised the girl, ‘he surely did, for he’s gone and he’ll never return.’
‘So long as I’m around you can be sure that sooner or later he’ll show up,’ Tough Kitty promised upon her word. ‘He thinks too much of me to leave me stranded and broke.’
‘He thinks so much of you,’ the old man asked mildly, ‘where is he now?’
‘I’m not free to tell,’ the girl answered before he’d finished asking.
‘And I’m not free to hand out free beers,’ Doc answered almost as fast.
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.
The old man brought the beer and scooped up half her pennies. ‘I’ve got a little money put by,’ he recalled casually, ‘I’d like to invest in a chicken farm. Do you know where I can go for advice?’
‘Why, that’s exactly what my Oliver—’ she cut herself short, the shrewd hard girl as gullible at the last as any. And the old man turned back to his dolls.
His dolls that were never drunken.
Someone pressed the buzzer just right and, peering out, he saw that bully, missing many days, that once had called himself Stingaree.
It was plain enough, the moment Dove came in, that if he wasn’t just out of hospital he was just out of jail. But so many had been in and out since the old man had last seen this one he had lost track of who was in where and who was out. And didn’t much care which.
‘Stay as long as you got something to spend,’ he warned the fellow, ‘then get out. Don’t let me catch you cadging others for drinks.’
‘I bought drinks for others a-plenty here and you never seemed to mind, old man,’ Dove reminded him.
‘I don’t mind yet,’ old Doc assured him. ‘Buy as many for others as you want. What are you having yourself?’
‘Whiskey and wash,’ Dove told him. The old man waited till he’d put his money down.
Dove poured his whiskey into his beer, taking his time with the pouring. Then took it to a table by himself, saying hello to no one. In the dingy light the panders and their women moved like people under water. Overhead the slow fans beat like the beat of a ship’s propellers heard on a deep sea floor. Though he had known everyone in the place by his or her first name only five months before, now they seemed people from some lost lifetime hardly known at all. When he asked a woman if she had seen Hallie, all he got was a shrug. Either the woman didn’t know or was too careful too tell. Nobody was long remembered on Old Perdido Street.
The only one whose memory of himself seemed fresh was the very one by whom he wished to be unremembered, with her side-of-the-mouth wise grin. Kitty came up to him but before she could either beg for a drink or offer him one, he shook his head, No. He was having no part of her.
It was a quiet afternoon. Dockery looked out once or twice to see that nobody was sneaking his own bottle. Of course the slobs were littering his floor once more – but a kind of tittering delight took him when his slobs did that, for it promised him the later joy of making all spick and span again. It was one of the few joys the old man had left.
He noticed Legless Schmidt’s platform leaning against a wall and Schmidt himself at a table, stumps sticking straight out before him, across from Tough Kitty. The old man approved of that: she wouldn’t be with him if he weren’t spending. He even thought of bringing them a couple shots, compliments of the house, to get them started, but then thought better of it. And took to dusting his dolls, giving Raggedy Ann special attention.
He never heard the first threat. There was only a sort of half-muted babble that rose for a moment above the fans’ steady thudding, then curiously subsided. When he looked out the redhaired bully with the hospital pallor had his back planted against the wall and Schmidt was standing before him, stumps spread wide, the flat of his palm on the floor to brace himself.
‘I got nothin’ against you, mister,’ Doc heard the bully say.
‘You deny you left with her? You deny living with her?’
‘I left with her and we lived together too. I don’t deny that, mister. But if I knew where she was I’d tell you. But I been away myself.’
‘Don’t give me that camouflage. You know where she is, for she sent you here to find out what I’m doing. You came by God because she sent you.’ He seemed oddly sure of himself. Kitty Twist stood just behind him. ‘You’ll say where she is, and you’ll take me there. Or by God you’ll take the consequences.’
‘Give the men room, boys,’ the outlaws and derelicts vied now like men of public spirit working for the welfare of all.
‘If it’s what they both want, let them have it out,’ Dockery took his stand, ‘’n no interferin’ – a square shake all around.’
‘Make ’em shake hands, Doc, that shows they’re both good fellas.’
‘Then let’s see which is best,’ Kitty Twist put her two cents in.
The panders pushed the women back, and as fast as they pushed them the women struggled up front again.
Then all felt the big hush come down.
‘Back up,’ Dove waved an iron spittoon, ‘I don’t want trouble,’ and took one step toward Schmidt.
Schmidt didn’t back but merely stood, figuring his man. Then turned, the women and men making room as he knee-walked to his platform and carefully buckled himself in.
‘Going home early, Big Dad?’ somebody asked, but the cripple didn’t answer that. His platform was his weapon as well as his armor, and they all knew that.
Dove began moving slowly along the wall toward where the late alley-light shown through a half-open door. If he got within one jump he’d make a run for that. And never come back.
But as he moved slowly Schmidt moved slowly, a ballbearinged monster with his hands on the bearings, ready to swivel, charge or reverse. Without closing in, the platform kept pace. Behind him, pale with pleasured terror, faces of men and faces of women followed and paused and followed again. With no sound in the place but the thud of the fans and the quickening breath, like a caught rabbit’s breathing, of one who was almost caught.
Dockery saw Schmidt’s lips moving silently, like a man trying a combination mentally before executing it. He feinted Dove to left, to right, and each time Dove switched the spittoon, left to right. ‘I don’t know where your wife’ – at ‘wife’ Schmidt gave his wheels one hard swift twist and thundered in, his forearm protecting his eyes.
Dove swung the heavy spittoon like a discus under the protecting arm. Schmidt rocked like a loosened stump in a storm but the platform kept coming in. Dove swung again.
The force of that second blow swiveled Schmidt’s wheels, he banged blindly in the wall and rebounded, wheels going this way then that.
‘Get him,’ Dove heard the whisper from every side, ‘Now. Now. Now. Brain him while he’s blind.’ For Schmidt’s head was so low that his bald-spot looked at Dove.