Entrapment and Other Writings by Nelson Algren
“Everything us two kids own in this world is right in that there grip, mister,” Daddy told them and got rid of his coat on the bed.
There wasn’t anything but old clothes in the grip, and that was right when Daddy got his real good chance. He had two C-notes in his fly and one of the nabs went into the bedroom. All daddy had to do then was pick that envelope out of the coat pocket, hand the nabber left alone with us one of the C’s and flush the tea down the toilet. Only the other came back just then and he was the one found the right pocket at last. He tried a seed on the very tip of his big cow-tongue—“What’s this?” he asked the other clown.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Daddy told him, “I never seen it before.”
But he looked just so all in.
All we could hope for was the stop-warrant from Kentucky wouldn’t show up in court.
I remember His Honor putting his glasses on to see how come Daddy done two years so young. They were the rimless kind. “Two murderous fights in two years,” His Honor told himself, out loud.
If he had just asked me what had happened, I would of told him. Then he wouldn’t have had to read all that paper.
When my Daddy came out of Boys’ Industrial and began courting me, how he battled everyone he thought had courted me before! Even though all I was was the first sight he saw wearing a dress. Yet them evil town-boys had only to name some country boy like he’d had a roll-in-the-meadow with me and Daddy would whup that boy, no questions asked. But the kids he whupped were the ones who’d had no more fun with me than that of walking me home from vesper services. All I hoped was one of them boys wouldn’t be so mean as to bring up the name of the Morganfield boy.
He was the one I started to lewdlin’ with and it got out of hand—yet I hadn’t set eye on him since Christian had begun courtin’ me. Fact is it wasn’t but a bare ten days between that last night with the Morganfield boy and my first all-night night with Christian. Seven months after, it wasn’t a certainty in my mind to which one of them boys I owed my condition. But of course I chose Daddy. I’ve always had good taste.
When I seen Daddy waiting by the pinball machines I tried to get him out of the bar. But he lit up the machine and paid me no mind. No mind at all. When the Morganfield boy came in and seen Daddy, he knew who Daddy was waiting for, too.
I asked the bartender to help me get Daddy out. Or the Morganfield boy either one. And the Morganfield boy would have been more than happy to leave; but for the way he’d look in the eyes of others. “Leave them have it out,” the bartender told me.
“I recommend you to leave,” Daddy gave me orders. But I got no farther than to go through that bar door. Something held me outside. I knew what was going to happen in there.
Daddy has his own ways. He didn’t so much as reproach that boy. He simply invited him to a game of pinball.
They played several games, so I was later told, with the Morganfield boy playing to lose, until Daddy accused him of tilting. The Morganfield boy just shook his head knowing it was no use denying anything.
“You ain’t by way of being much a man, are you?” Daddy then put it to him; and that the boy was forced to deny. I was standing outside the door when I heard the bartender turn the key in the lock.
The Morganfield boy must have heard it turn, too. It was the last key he ever heard turn. He lingered a week after that beating then died in the night.
A week after, I had my girl-baby. The very spitting image of Christian.
Christian won a plea of self-defense in the same courtroom; the same week I gave the baby up for adoption.
Ten days later we were riding a moving van into LA.
His Honor didn’t have to keep his specs on any longer. He’d read enough for a spell. “Young man, I think you’re a Menace to Society,” and by the way he snapped that glass case shut I knew that was what he’d really been wanting to say all along. He had his excuse.
“I think society is a menace to my Daddy—” it was out before I could bite my tongue. Because that was what I’d been wanting to say all along.
“Prisoner remanded in lieu of bail. Cash bond set at five hundred dollars. Case continued till Thursday at nine.” He was really going to give it to my Daddy Thursday at nine.
Forty-eight hours to raise half a grand. It could never be done by turning tricks even at the outrageous prices I charged.
“If you tell me to go for the sodium amytal, I’ll go,” I told him, for I’d worked with knockout drops when we were hard pressed once before. It isn’t my line. But when it comes down to a matter of Daddy’s freedom I can do anything.
Daddy forbade me. “Forget the rough stuff, Baby. If you slipped we’d both be busted. Just get what you can on your coat. Then what you can on your watch. You don’t actually need that Japanese kimono. If there ain’t half a grand hanging in your closet I miss my guess. Only don’t dump it all in one joint,” he warned me. “Spread it around so it don’t look like we’re thinking of blowing town or nothing like that.”
My coat. My watch, My kimono. Not one word about his coat, his watch, his raw silk pajamas or his red silk foulard robe. That child is so jealous of his clothes he can scarcely bear to part with a button if it’s pearl.
I spread the stuff around like he told me. Half a bill for his topcoat. Another for his watch and ring. I only got twenty for the foulard robe. I didn’t begin to spread my own things till his were gone. I got the half a grand without losing either my Longine or my chubby. Daddy got to sign his bond just before midnight Wednesday.
But O that long walk down the courthouse corridor, with an eye-dropper hype in one cup of my bra and a bottle of dolaphine with a five-spot wrapped around it in the other before we made the open street.
As soon as we made it he wants to grab a cab back to the hotel for his clothes. My own coat was hanging over my arm.
“I got a sneak-hunch somebody’s waitin’ for us there,” I lied. Because I know how he respects my sneak-hunches.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But I won’t go back.”
“I take your word only because I have to,” Daddy gave in with doubt.
Then that big cold lonesome lights-out bus. Without a driver, without a rider. Waiting just for us.
The aisle had just been swept and a little wind kept snooping under the seats to see was it clean there, too. We sat in the back seat, us two fools, and Daddy turned his collar up against me. He was still trying to figure whether I’d hocked his clothes ahead of my own. The question was only technical, of course; but it was important for him to know all the same. I’d never gone against orders before, and he had no way of knowing if I had or not. I scarcely could blame him for feeling brought down.
After the way he’d come hitchhiking a vegetable truck into LA and in two months rose to the top of the heap, from San P. Street to Beverly Hills; after all the class he took on in almost no time at all; after the argyles and the monogrammed shirts, the cordovans and the easy days, till he’d reached a point where people with class invited us both to spend an afternoon on a yacht in The Bay—to be leaving now with no more to show than tracks down both arms and heel-holes in both socks would have brought down an even yet greater Daddy than mine. Except of course there ain’t none greater. He may not be the best macker there is. But he is the meanest little old dog of a Daddy in town.
After Vegas the trick would be to see how long we could keep from coming sick in a cornfield. I didn’t show him the dolaphine till it was breaking light and I was getting a weak streak through my own middle. Daddy had just rest-stop time enough to fix hisself. There wasn’t time for me there and it’s a long deal between stops. When I did fix at last I added just a drop of water to replace what I’d used; so Daddy wouldn’t fret at sight of the stuff going down too fast in the bottle. Or he might get sick sooner than need be.
Just before Vegas I took a little closer look and seen it was fuller than I’d filled it. I didn’t say nothing. I just let him handle the refills and didn’t
He laughed then, he was feeling real good. “Everything’s going to be perfect, Baby,” he told me. Then we both fixed and sure enough it looked like everything would be perfect.
“Baby,” he told me, “you’re taking care of me in the little things.”
“I’m taking care of you in the big ones as well,” I told him—“Didn’t I tell His Honor where to head in?” I got that in quick because it had to be settled while Daddy was still feeling well.
“You certainly did, Girl-Baby,” he come through ever so nice.
Now you see how he is? God help me if ever his eye lit on a pawn ticket for a red silk bathrobe—but when he got a really legit beef on me, like costing us everything we own for the sake of one sassy small-town remark, he just laughs the whole deal off.
“Stay out of sight,” I hurried him then, “here comes our transportation.”
I’d thumb down a driver and get one foot in the car, then I’d say Wait For My Brother Mister and up would jump Daddy out of the bushes and come just a-trotting. I guess for a short spell there he was the up-jumpinest, very trottinest little Daddy on Route 66. Once he up-jumped and come a-trottin’ so fast a lady driver wheeled off with a strip of my skirt in her door handle.
“Daddy,” I scolded him, “don’t up-jump so fast, else you’ll be swinging a one-legged whore.”
Comical things like that are what I say every now and then. Not very often. Just from time to time. If I do it oftener Daddy says, “I’ll make the jokes in this family.”
Neither of us were making jokes when we stepped down off that Odgen Avenue trolley. Four cross-country days of Wait-For-My-Brother-Mister, four cross-country nights on watery dolaphine. I felt like something that had been on a raft three weeks at sea.
The sidewalks so glarey, so hard. The sky all so bare. The people when they pass looking straight ahead—I wouldn’t touch one for fear he’d scream. And how that ass-high Chicago wind comes right at you, so mad, it feels like it wants to cut you a new petoochi right then and there.
We went into a grocery and bought a box of graham crackers just to get out of that wind. A sign said SLEEPING ROOMS. That was for us. I just leaned, I was that done in. Christian kept one arm around me. He was trying for something, I couldn’t make out just what, with that old doll behind the counter. When his arm went for my wrist I knew what he was trying for. Daddy’s been trying for my Longine for some time now.
He could of got maybe twelve dollars for it off the old woman—if he could of got it off me. But he had to settle for six dollars on his own hour-piece. That I’d paid forty dollars for.
And then handed the six right back across the counter for a week’s rent sight unseen. How could she afford to make a trade like that? She won’t be in business long.
But she threw in the crackers and took us upstairs with her keys in one hand and a quart of milk in the other. The stairs were so dark we would of got lost on the way up but for that bottle. My throat was so parched I could near taste it. If she’d set it down when she opened the door I would of picked it up for her and then let my tongue just hang. But she only needed one hand to open the door.
For that door you didn’t even need one hand—it hung so far ajar we could of squeezed in between it and the jamb one by one. Inside the room she looked right into my face and set the bottle down on the dresser.
Then she looked into Daddy’s and picked it up again. Daddy got too much pride to ask for things and I was too sick to. She went downstairs taking it with her.
“She needs it to light the way down,” I told Daddy.
He pulled up the shade and I seen a square of red brick wall dripping wet though it wasn’t raining. I seen a brassy old high-ended bed. I seen a soggy mattress made of great big lumps and tiny burns. I seen four green-paper walls. I seen a holy calendar from what year I couldn’t tell but I’d judge it was B.C. This one made the San Pedro trap look sharp.
“I’ll see you at the Greyhound Station,” I told my Daddy.
“You can’t come sick in the open street, Beth-Mary,” he told me; and he got to the door before me and locked it so tight all you could see through it was two inches of the hall.
“I’m sick already,” I told him though it killed me to admit it. Daddy don’t let hisself come sick in his mind, heart and bowels like me. He puts his own sickness down for the sake of mine. That way I get to be sick for both of us.
He put newspapers under me. He made me a little pillow out of his hole-in-heel socks and a hand towel with a red border. He took my shoes and stocking off so’s I wouldn’t get runs when I started to kick. He put my chubby over me. He called me his Girl-Baby.
That’s what he calls me when he loves me the most.
Watch out for Daddy when he loves you the most. You have to come next to deathbed before he lets himself act tender.
“Let me take your Longine, sweetheart,” he told me, “else you’ll crack the crystal when you start in to swing.”
“I’d as soon keep it on,” I told Daddy.
For I felt the big fear coming on. It was coming a-slipping, it was coming a-crawl, it was slipping and crawling down that slippery red wall.
“Don’t leave me, Christian,” I asked him then.
“I’ve seen you from Shawneetown. I saw you through LA. I’m here to see you the rest of the way.”
“The rest of the way is by the stars,” I told him.
“By starlight or no light,” he told me, and his voice started going far away then; yet I knew it was telling me I wasn’t to have Stuff any more ever. Something got a grip on that red brick wall and wouldn’t let go.
“Pull down the shade,” I told him, “they’ve changed their plans.”
He pulled down the shade. I could tell by the shadow that fell as it fell. I had a little secret to tell. “Where are you?” I asked him.
“Right beside you, Beth-Mary.”
“They’re waiting in the hall,” I told him my secret: “They’ve stole the master key.”
He put a chair under the doorknob and stuffed the keyhole to humor me. “Daddy is right here beside you.”
There was somebody in that hall all the same. And somebody on the rooftop too.
The Federal man was beside the bed pressing my left hand for prints; but I hid the right under the covers because that was the one that really counted. I kept turning the wrong hand like Daddy turning the wrong pocket because it was me wearing the big stop-warrant W and not Daddy at all. That was what I’d been suspecting for some time now. “Beth-Mary,” the Fed began to sound like my Daddy, “try to rest till Dark.”
“Never heard the name till now,” I told him, “but the first hustling broad I meet who answers to it, I’ll tell her she’s suppose to come downtown.”
“It’s only me, your little Daddy,” that Fed tried his best. “Look at me, Beth-Mary.”
“I have seen you somewheres before,” I told him. “You’re the nigger bellboy tried to pimp me off my little Daddy on San P. Street—remind me to have him cripple you back of the parking lot. It won’t take as long this time as before.”
Not till that moment did Daddy know I knew about that deal.
“Beth-Mary Kindred,” he asked me—“Look at me. Are you putting it on?”
“Come closer,” I told him. For I was much more sly than he ever had supposed.
He came up close. He was all misty-white. “Get out! Get out!” I screamed right out—I wanted to cry, I wanted to laugh, I was freezing cold, I was sweating-wet. I couldn’t get up still I couldn’t lie still. I wanted to feel of someone’s hand. Yet I couldn’t bear human touch.
I can hear a country mile off, sick or well. Daddy don’t hear a thing till it’s next to his ear.
I heard steps in the hall. I said what I heard. Was it really steps or not? He didn’t know whether to duck or go blind.
“Hold
“That’s the New York Central, sweetheart.” He thought he could tell me just anything.
“Christian Kindred—finky liar—you good and well know that ain’t no New York Central.”
“Maybe it’s the Illinois Central then. Maybe it’s the Nickel Plate. For all I know, Baby, it could be the Rock Island.”
“You lie in your teeth. You know as well as I it’s the Southern Pacific.”
“That’s right, sweetheart,” he agreed too soon, “it’s the Southern Pacific for sure.”
“Wait in the hall!” I hollered right at him—“Do as you’re told!”
He closed the door quiet to make off like he done as he was told. He didn’t dare leave me. Yet feared to come near me. “Little Baby,” I heard him ask, “don’t battle me so. You’re grinding your teeth.”
It’s the kind of sickness you do well not to grind your teeth. But I wasn’t battling him. I was battling it. Though it’s a sickness it’s the purest of follies to battle. Yet you have to battle it all the same. Battle and grind till your strength is spent in hope of one blessed moment of rest.
That moment comes yet it’s never blessed. Your nose runs. Your eyes water. Your mouth drools like a possum’s in love. “Daddy,” I told him, “I don’t want you to see me looking this way.”
Then it’s some sort of fever-doze where you’re dreaming by the moment. Yet know right where you are all the while. It’s something real wild that can’t be endured. You endure it all the same.
It’s all misty-white, it’s like under water. Yet of a sudden the whole room will come clear and everything in it stands out to the wallpaper’s tiniest crack.
It’s the sickness that turns you against yourself. You’re like two people, a weak cat and a strong, with no use for each other but they can’t pull apart. “I don’t deserve to be punished like this.” you hear the weak cat grieve.