Entrapment and Other Writings by Nelson Algren Read Free Book Online

yelling he’d go out of his class and lick every flannel-mouth Polack on Chicago Av’noo.
    I picked him up a few days later just for his cockiness. He never did come through any more in the fights I got him though he come through that night. But it does make me feel low thinkin how I won’t never see him yank off a tablecloth in O’Connor’s, beers and all onto the floor again, and then call O’Connor a underfed shoneen. He’d get hisself and everybody with him thrown out of some place, and then back in and argue till they tossed him out again. “I liked that,” he’d say as soon as he caught his wind on the sidewalk. “Give me some more of that, O’Connor you filth”—and out he’d come flying again, and keep it up till O’Connor either closed the place or called the squad. I won’t pass no tavern no more and hear him shoutin around inside for the biggest shot on 63rd Street, even if he was orderin it somewheres in Blue Island or Gary. Or meet him weavin down 57th at nine o’clock of a Sunday morning with a half-gallon empty under either arm, brushing folks out of his way and panhandling every Irish face he passed. The good Irish on their way to Mass would keep right on going when he’d offer to give them the empties for half the price of the refund on them.
    Maybe we brought him along too fast. Maybe he was overmatched. His feet wouldn’t follow his punches though, ever; though he was fast enough when he was right. If he’d been right a little more often, if he’d of lived right even three days of the week before a fight, say, this never would have happened. It only happened because deep inside him he wanted it to.
    I had that feeling that he’d been holding out the whole time. Looking down at his casket in the open grave with five shots of good Irish whiskey inside of me, I tossed the empty bottle in against the edge of the casket and bust it. And all at once it just seemed to me this was just a new way Blackie had thought up of holding back on me. If I’d had one more and the casket would have still been open, I would have bust the bottle on his stubborn skull. It’s four days nowsince the wake and I can’t seem to care about the things I got to do, one way or another, any more than
he
ever did.
    If I’d never crossed the street that night after he lost to Bruno Meleska to talk to the tramp, I’d be settin on top of the world this minute, instead of where I am.
HIS MOTHER:
    Of all the money that lad made at gambling and fighting, even stealing for all I might have known and setting such an example to his younger brothers as more than once made me wish him out of the house to stay, he never so much as once brought a dollar home or bought his mother so much as a flimsy house dress. All he ever brought me home was that night-cat Marge of his, to sleep with him in the roomer’s bed after the roomer had went off to work. And leave me to make their sheets up afters. Then back they’d go to their boozing and helling and whoring back of White City soon. As ever the streets were darkening and the little lights coming on.
    So ‘tis just as well I say, for he was the sort of lad who’d strike his own mother, once the will took him. And I say Father Ryan was right in washing his hands of the lad, his own father and brothers was right in throwing him out when his breath smelt of the drink. And the lad would best have died in his cradle in Cork. And I’m a church woman in good standing that’s saying this.
    I thank the Virgin not one of his brothers are fighters and gamblers, they’re good boys every one and it was Mary’s blessing, nothing less, that made him the one to go. I thank the Saviour he’ll not be bringing home that little simpering thing to sleep with him in the roomer’s bed, be leaving the sheets for me to make up afters and then to have her crossing herself like a nun and saying a Novena at my own table soon as ever it’s getting dark in the streets again.
CAVANAUGH:
    I was fit that