A Walk on the Wild Side (28 page)

‘Oh, how I wish I could get off this
killing
kick,’ he’d complain. ‘Why do I
do
it?’

‘You might throw away that thirty-eight,’ Lucille advised him again.

‘Why, then I’d be without help,’ Finnerty told her in mild surprise. She was his housekeeper and was half-fond of him.

Yet when asked by a stranger, half-amused at the outrageous little sport in cowboy boots and smelling of cologne, ‘How tall
are
you, Shorty?’ Finnerty had replied, ‘About ass-high to a tall Indian. You figure you’re higher?’

The stranger answered softly, ‘I figure we’re about the same height, mister.’

‘That aint good enough.’

‘Could be you’re a little higher.’

Yet if he really liked you he’d warm right up. ‘I’ve decided not to bury you,’ he’d congratulate you then, ‘I’ve made up my mind I’m on your side against everybody. I’m not even going to drop you. It’s time I got off this killing kick and I’m going to start with you.’

Once Oliver was on your side he’d stay right at your side. He knew you needed him. And who could deny so close a friend certain small favors, such as buying him drinks all afternoon? What would be left of a friendship that couldn’t stand up under a few whiskies?

Of women he asked no favor. They had no more side for a man to be on than so many fishes in a stream. Indeed, there were so many fishes. And the bait with which he hooked them hardly varied. It was the immemorial chicken farm story procurers have used since procuring began:

‘We don’t spend our money foolish like other couples, little baby,’ the story went. ‘They won’t catch us wasting it on strong drink and folly. After all, you and I both know you’re no more a whore at heart than I’m a pimp. We’re just a lover and his little sweetheart up against it for the moment. You listen to me, little baby, and everything will be perfect. So much in the bank every week come rain or come shine. I didn’t want to tell you this, sweetheart, I wanted to save it as a surprise, but I’ve had my eye on a little chicken farm upstate for you and me for some time now. We get that for ourselves, just you and me, little baby, and in five years we’re on Easy Street. The day we move in we stop by the justice of the peace, little sweetheart. Because if you take care of me in the little things I’m going to take care of you in the big ones.’

What kind of a little sweetheart would it be who wouldn’t take care of Lover in little things till he got on his feet again?

But the weeks stretched into three and the three into a month. The months to six and a year passed by, and she took care of Lover in the little things and he took care of her in the big: he kept her out of jail or visited her there when he couldn’t. He saw that she always had enough tricks and never let them come on too strong. He saved her from drunks, thieves, pederasts and fiends, and once or twice a year took her fishing with him.

But nothing was said about chicken farming any more. Once, long after it was too late for farming, he might catch her crying and pet her a bit. ‘What’s the matter, little baby? You got a fever? You want to take the night off?’ She might murmur something then about candling eggs, but he wouldn’t be able to understand what she meant. And after a while she cried on without knowing what she meant either, as a girl cries over a bad dream long after the dream is forgotten.

In time the tears dried. She could no longer cry over anything. All the tears had been shed, all the laughs had been had; all the love long spent. Leaving nothing to do but to sit stupefied, night after night, under lights made soft beside music with a beat, to rise automatically when someone wearing pants pointed a finger and said ‘that one there.’

Then just like an animal trained to sit up at sound of a little bell she found her way to the bed assigned her.

Where lay all she had claim to in the world: a towel, a tube of jelly, an enamel basin, a bar of Lifebuoy and a bottle of coke, half to be spilled in the basin and the other half for a douche.

Her ears heard the pants inquire her name, and her answer to that too was assigned. (‘This week you’re Pepper, little baby.’ If you let her pick her own she’d come up with something like Jane or Mary.)

So she fixed her mouth to smile in reply, washed him in water a little warm, lay down and shut her eyes; felt his hands roll her breasts and a long weight upon her, turned her head to avoid his breath, sensed some little convulsive jerk of his backside and opened her eyes: time was up again, time to begin again. By the time she returned to the light made soft beside the music that had a beat, another finger would be pointing ‘That one there.’

‘
Now
you finally got her where you can trust her,’ was Finnerty’s view. ‘So long as she wants to pick her own name you still aint got good conditions.’

Until a girl had relinquished every claim but those to basin, bed and towel, you couldn’t trust her. You couldn’t trust her until she had forgotten it was money she was working for. It took a man years of dedication to bring a girl to that. Only when he had madams sending him cash – no money orders – from half a dozen parts of the country might it be truly said of a man that he was a good pimp.

Finnerty’s talent lay in his limitless contempt for all things female. He treated women as though they were mindless. And in time they began to act mindlessly.

At the moment he actually had two hooked on the chicken farm story working under the same roof, and both well on their way to becoming ‘that one there.’

Frenchy and Reba worked side by side, each satisfied that it was the other whom Oliver would betray when the Judas hour struck. Meanwhile they competed, week in and week out, to show Oliver his faith wasn’t misplaced. If one week Reba was top broad, Frenchy was moping all the next, feeling so useless and so untrue that Oliver had to buck her up a bit – ‘Don’t feel so bad, honey, you done your best. That week she had was just lucky breaks. You got the looks all over her, you know that. I’m laying the odds on you this week.’

Inspired by the knowledge that her owner was still betting on her, Frenchy went all out, getting tricks to finish their business almost before they had their pants down, hustling them out the door to make room for the next, clucking at them like an enraged hen if they didn’t hurry and – lo! At the end of that week she had made half again Reba’s take.

‘I never been so proud of anyone in my life,’ Oliver congratulated her that Saturday in front of everyone. ‘Don’t bother me, you,’ he turned on Reba – ‘buy your own drinks, bum.’ But bought Frenchy drinks all night, paraded her about, asked her what she wanted for her birthday, where she wanted to go New Year’s Night (this was July) and told her the chicken farm was now actually within reach. ‘Only two more weeks like this one, little baby, and we got it made for life.’

But for the next two weeks Reba topped the whole house, they had to hold her back from pulling tricks in off the street – and so it went, week in, week out, playing the one against the other till it was a standing joke at Dockery’s Bar to ask who was Finnerty’s top broad now.

A joke which only the two butts failed to understand.

‘You must despise women something terrible,’ Mama once grew bold enough to challenge him.

‘I believe, whatever you are, be a stompdown good one,’ was all Finnerty replied.

And no one could deny that, at his trade, Oliver was anything but a stompdown good one. In fact, he was a perfect little dilly. For he never came on cheap and loud, such as ‘Meet the Stinger from St Louis, have a piece of skin. Got six broads in Miami, six in Kansas City,’ and all of that.

Yet why should any right-minded girl ruin her health just to keep some unfinshed product in sideburns looking sharp? What right-minded girl could let any forenoon lush bounce himself off her fine pink hide to wear off his hangover before going home to his wife, in order that some Finnerty could bet the daily double? Why wind up, scarred from ankles to breast, in some panel house in Trinidad?

It was something Mama pretended not to understand, but understood better than she let on. The fact was that an unprotected girl got into all manner of mischief, such as getting drunk on the job and ripping off her joint togs and trying to catch a Greyhound for home. It took a good pimp to keep a girl honest, Mama knew.

Mama Lucille abhorred violence; yet hardly a week passed but she was forced to say, ‘Honey, don’t make me get Finnerty here with his mittens.’

Yet when he put his mittens on, Finnerty always said, ‘Baby, this is going to be a wonderful lesson to you. Some day you’ll thank me for it.’

More than one innocent, deciding she’d rather keep her earnings than give them away, would shake some half-breed ponce in Omaha and go into business for herself in New Orleans.

But sooner or later, wherever she rented, rooming house or hotel, desk clerk or landlady would make certain arrangements with or without her consent. The line the landlady used might be, ‘Honey, I’d like you to meet a nephew of mine in the sporting goods line. He’s a sweet boy, good-looking and lots of fun, just in New Orleans for a weekend. Would you let him show you a good time?’

Desk clerks didn’t bother with that. There was a knock and there he was, checkered vest and one hand in his belt.

‘I’m not hard to get along with,’ he’d assure her after he told her the score. ‘Whether you want to come along easy or come along hard, that’s just up to you, baby. I’ve got us a nice little flat above a bar in the class part of town. There’s a
smart
girl.’

Mama boarded only one girl who had never been pandered and never would be. Hallie Breedlove had found her way to Perdido Street when small-town gossip had gone around that a certain schoolteacher wasn’t really white. Hallie had succeeded in passing as white half her life, and had married a white man who would not have married her had he had the faintest doubt of it. When the gossip had forced them to move to New Orleans, she had kept him believing it was no more than gossip. Then their baby was born and the secret was out. She had not seen him since.

She held herself higher, and took greater care of her health and earned more money, than any of the other women. If any of them actually wound up with a chicken farm, it would be Hallie.

Yet when Finnerty propositioned her, he made no allowances for the fact that he wasn’t, for once, talking to a demented child. He went at her exactly as though she were as mindless as the others.

‘Why, that sounds almost too good to be true, Little Daddy,’ Hallie tried not to appear too excited at his offer. ‘Only I’m
mad
—’ she stood half a head higher than him, but she baby-pouted.

‘
Mad
at your Little Daddy?’ Finnerty couldn’t believe it. ‘
Why?
’

‘Because you promised Reba
she’d
never have to pull feathers and you promised Frenchy all
she’d
have to do was candle – but me you got stepping over droppings, carrying feed and slapping new coops together. Little Daddy, it just don’t seem
fair
.’

‘
Them
two fools,’ Finnerty scoffed merrily, ‘you don’t think I’d let a couple city clowns like them on
my
chicken farm, do you? You and I know what hard work is, we know what chicken farming is. Now wouldn’t I look good trying to tell a smart country girl like yourself that all she had to do is candle? That’s why with you I’m
sincere
. A country girl and a country boy. We know you don’t get nowheres without hard work. Don’t we, little baby?’

‘What country exactly is that, Little Daddy?’

Not until then did Finnerty see he’d been had.

‘Go on turning tricks till you’re sixty,’ he gave up on Hallie. ‘Just don’t come running to me for help, that’s all.’

‘I didn’t say I
wouldn’t
.’ Hallie kept a baitless string bobbing.

Yet when Frenchy would shake her head and say sadly, ‘Reba, poor thing. I really don’t dislike her, I just feel so
sorry
for her, the fool Oliver is making of her,’ Hallie would be noncommittal.

For Reba was equally concerned about poor Frenchy, and worried what would happen to the girl when she and Oliver left for the farm.

Hallie pitied both, and Floralee as well, and nearly everyone.

Everyone, that is, but Oliver Finnerty. There was no place in her heart, inside or out, that did not freeze over at sight of him gnawing his little nail. And while Finnerty could respect her lack of interest in his farm, he could never forgive her indifference to his physical charms. He was hurt.

‘The broad carries herself mighty high for one I got reason to think aint even got the right to be working the doors of a white house.’ He had tried and she had mocked him. There was only one answer now: force.

So he caught her alone petting her lame cat, the very one that had crippled his mouse, and came right to the point:

‘Baby, you got all that education working for you, let’s see you walk to that bureau drawer, take out every penny and come back here and hand it to me. If you hold out so much as a nickel it’s as bad as trying to hold out the whole roll and that’s plain stealing. Move, you.’

Hallie stopped petting the cat long enough to give the pander a gray, grave look. Then bundling the cat comfortably in the crook of her arm so as not to jog it, went to the bureau and put her back solidly up against it. In the bathrobe once red now faded to rose, her hand dropped casually to her pocket.

Finnerty closed the door behind him and dropped the key into his pocket. ‘You know I’m not without help, little baby,’ he warned her.

‘I don’t plan to cut you,’ Hallie told him quietly. ‘I got cut once myself. I won’t scratch you because I don’t like to see a man walking around with scratches on his face. I won’t throw acid in your eyes because it makes me sorry to see a blind person. All I’ll do is kill you where you stand. If you get through the door I’ll kill you on the stair. If you make the stair I’ll kill you in the parlor. If you make the street I’ll kill you on the curb. I’ll kill you in the alley. I’ll kill you in God’s House. I’ll kill you anywhere.’