Algren by Mary Wisniewski Read Free Book Online Page A

would—Cokes cost more than expected. The man said his name was Luther, though Nelson doubted it. Aliases were common on the road—call me Tex, call me Swede. Florida Luther introduced Nelson toanother Luther, from Texas, who had a steel plate in his head from a war injury, and the trio agreed to share a seven-dollar-a-week room on Camp Street.
    Nelson took odd jobs, washing dishes, mowing lawns, setting bowling pins, and selling door-to-door. One job involved selling subscription orders for the Standard Coffee Company; the lady of the house would be offered a pretty red tin coffeepot as an incentive. But there was more to it than that, explains a hustler in
A Walk on the Wild Side
. “Heed the housewife’s woes, boy. Give heed to her trials and little cares. Make her joys your joys, her tears your tears.” This would ensure she did not understand how much coffee she would have to buy to finally own the pot. One lonely housewife talked so long that Nelson blacked out in the sticky, southern heat. Nelson doesn’t talk about it in memoirs and interviews, but he was a handsome youth known through life for a strong sex drive, so it is possible he offered a few New Orleans women more than a willing ear. In
A Walk on the Wild Side
, Dove’s attempt to retrieve a coffeepot turns into farcical sex on a rocking chair.
    Another door-to-door route selling skin lighteners and hair straighteners did not bring in much. One night in New Orleans, Nelson remembered sitting around a dim electric bulb like a campfire, sharing thin soup enlivened with a single piece of ham. Everyone knew the man serving the soup would keep the ham for himself. But he slipped somehow, and the meat landed in an old visitor’s bowl. Nelson remembered the terrible sense of loss.
    What happened? That was the question on all the thin faces around him, all these native sons. He heard it in everyone’s talk, from the boxcars, from the jungles, from the women on back porches yearning for brightly colored coffeepots. I always worked hard, my family worked hard. We’re not bums. I fought in the war. I worked on the railroad. I went to college. I had a farm. I saved my money, and the bank lost it. If we worked hard, weren’t wesupposed to rise? He heard stories colored in every shade of desperation—of babies dying and wives leaving, of fathers committing suicide and crops that wouldn’t grow, of nonunion factory jobs that burned lungs or crushed fingers, of mothers and sisters gone mad.
    Hunger breeds larceny, and one of the Luthers landed on a scheme. He had somehow acquired a thousand certificates from a beauty shop, offering a shampoo and a finger wave—the sculpted style popular in the 1930s and tricky to do at home. In small print the certificate would explain that the service cost $3.50, but Nelson and the Luthers would say it was free, and ask for just a quarter for a courtesy charge. Sometimes they would run into some sharp soul, standing with her arms folded at her mosquito-netted back door, wondering if this was not too good to be true. Then she’d be told to just go ahead and call the shop—but there weren’t many telephones in the poorer New Orleans neighborhoods. The salesmen would make sure there was no telephone by checking the backyards for a phone connection ahead of time. The lady would be told that if she did not want the certificate, her neighbor would, and then who’d get that marcel wave? It was a lovely con—the mark would go to the parlor and find it was not free, while the salesmen could take the quarters and fill up on po’boys and bananas. Nelson tells the beauty parlor story in several places, and gives the sales job to Dove in
A Walk on the Wild Side
. Nowhere does he express remorse for cheating poor women, though this was certainly a more shameful scam than the Swedish penny con pulled by his grandfather. This shows a bit of coldness in Nelson, but also the