Street of No Return by David Goodis, Robert Polito Read Free Book Online Page B

going south on River, then ducked into a very narrow alley and headed east again in the thick blackness of the Hellhole, going toward the river and telling himself it might work out all right if he could reach the river. Along the water front there were a lot of places where he could hide. And maybe later he could sneak onto one of the ships. But that was for later. Much later. Right now the river was a long way off. And the law was very near. And he was very tired.
He heard them coming down the alley and he hopped a fence, getting over it before their flashlights could find him. Then across the back yard and over another fence. Then a third fence, and a fourth, with the back yards very small and piles of wood stacked here and there for fuel in the wooden shacks, just enough space for the firewood and the garbage can and the outside toilet. It was a matter of running zigzag to get to the next fence. He knew the next fence would be the last because now he was really all in. He got there and climbed over the fence and fell on his back. There was a dragging, weak clanking sound like the useless noise of stripped gears, and he knew it came from inside his chest. He had the feeling that all the flesh inside him was stripped and burned out. But it was nice to rest there flat on his back. They'd be coming soon and maybe when they saw what shape he was in they'd take him to a hospital instead of returning him to the station house. That would be a break. He closed his eyes and dragged the wonderful air into his lungs and waited for them to come.
But they didn't come. Several minutes passed and they didn't come. There was no sound and no reflection of flashlights. He reasoned they were still headed east, they probably figured it wouldn't be these back yards and their man was trying for the river. That meant their search would be concentrated along the water front. He decided they'd be busy there for the rest of the night and he might as well go to sleep here. His arm curled under his head and he closed his eyes.
The wind from the river was very cold but he was too tired to feel it. It took him less than a minute to fall asleep. An hour later he opened his eyes and a light hit him in the face. It was a flickering light and it had nothing to do with the back yard. He told himself he was still asleep. But then he opened his eyes again and realized he was really awake and this wasn't the back yard.
It was the interior of the wooden shack. He was resting under some blankets on a narrow cot against the wall. The other furniture was a three-legged stool and a two-legged table with the other two sides supported on wooden fruit boxes. The flickering light came from a candle in a small holder on the table. Along the walls there were rows of gallon jugs containing colorless liquid. On the table there was a bottle half filled with the colorless liquid, and alongside the bottle there was an empty water glass. There was only one door in the room and Whitey knew that what he'd thought was the back yard was really the front yard. So this place had no back yard; in the back it was just another alley and then more wooden shacks. He knew it because now he was fully awake and able to think fairly clearly, able to judge the distance he'd covered from the station house to here. This was strictly seven-dollars-a-month territory. This was the Afro-American section of the Hellhole.
The door opened and a colored man came in. The colored man was as dark as the emery strip of a match book. He was around five-nine and couldn't have weighed more than 115 at the most. There was no hair on his head and there weren't many wrinkles on his face and it was impossible to tell how old he was. He wore rimless spectacles and a woman's fur coat made of squirrel.
Whitey was sitting up in the cot and looking at the woman's fur coat.
"Don't get the wrong notion," the colored man said. He fingered the squirrel collar. "I just wear this to keep warm. I'm an old man and I can't take