“If he arrested a bum like you, they’d throw him off the force,” Little Stash returned, feeling irritable at not having gotten himself pinched. He sat down beside Oliver and put an arm across his shoulders because Oliver was looking sadder and sadder. Big Stash saw how sad Oliver was, so he sat down beside him and put his arm around him too.
“I didn’t mean that about not giving you no Christmas present,” he apologized, “I’m going to see you get a free pass to the grandstand at Sportsman’s Park next spring.”
“Chicago ought to throw me off the force,” Oliver assured both bookies. “Did you ever see it in the papers—‘Officer Oliver Katz exchanges fire with bank bandits’? Did you ever see it—‘Officer Katz traps narcotic ring’? Did you ever see it—‘Officer Katz guns down rapist’? Chicago’s been too good to me, that’s all. Chicago feeds me. Chicago clothes me. Chicago pays my rent. Chicago gives me money to play horses. Chicago pays my way to Cubs Park when the Giants are in town. Chicago lets me ride its transportation free. Chicago invites me to the Police Benefit Picnic and the Firemen’s Ball and Chicago is going to give me a pension. And what have I ever done for Chicago?”
His answer sounded like a sob—“Nothing! I’m the guy who bites the hand that feeds him! I’m the guy who draws his pay but never arrests nobody! I’m the guy who, kids just look at me, they turn to crime for a living! Nobody should talk to me even!”
Big Stash patted Oliver’s shoulder consolingly. “I know just how you feel,” he assured Oliver, “if you want I’ll throw you out into the alley on your head. It’s only one flight down.”
“I’ll help throw him,” Little Stash offered, “I like him as much as you. If we both threw him into the alley it’d make up for not giving him a nice Christmas present.”
“I’m through asking favors,” Oliver decided with determination and stood up: “I’ll never make another bet until I’ve made a good pinch!”
Oliver walked out with his head held high, his jaw firmly set: a living picture of firm resolution.
All the two Stashes could do was to watch him go. And they heard not a word from him for a full week.
“He’s trying to make a pinch, poor guy,” Big Stash explained to Little Stash, “and he ain’t got the heart for it.”
Elisabeta Vrojecivik, a slight woman of seventy-one years and a widow for forty of them, was of Hungarian extraction and had been married to a Czech. Though she weighed not quite 100 pounds, every pound she carried was sinew.
Walking lightly in a West Side twilight, carrying a handbag containing $19.25, she came down Augusta Boulevard toward North Noble Street.
Her plan was to buy a small green Christmas tree: she would have nothing to do with aluminum ones. The balance of her money she would spend on lights, artificial snow, and a couple of toys for her two grandchildren, who would be spending Christmas Day with her.
The light was against her on Noble and, as she waited, a tall youth came up and stood beside her: a little too close. When the light changed he grabbed her handbag and wheeled about and Elisabeta wheeled right with him with the bag’s strap entwined around her wrist. He yanked her behind him, her skinny seventy-one-year-old legs pumping madly to keep up with his stride. Then he turned into an alley so fast that she was whipped off her feet, yet she held on to the bag. She sat with both hands on the strap as if she were sleigh riding behind a runaway horse—they were well down the alley before he realized that she was still with him. He neighed a swift warning—“Lady! Let go!”—and gave such a tug at the bag that the strap broke in her hands, yet the tug propelled her forward. Falling, she reached blindly and caught his right ankle.
As he raced out of sight, Elisabeta sat up and looked at her hands: they were holding a man’s shoe. She rose, dusted herself off, and went to wait under an arc lamp. When a squad car cruised past, she waved the shoe.
Officer Katz came out of the car to investigate. He studied the shoe a long moment, then brought it to his driver.
“I make it twenty-two-fifty a pair by Wieboldt’s” was the driver’s opinion. When Oliver looked up he saw a tall youth coming toward him wearing no shoes at all, but with one shoe under his arm. He came right up to Oliver.
“That’s my shoe,” he assured Oliver—“See?” He showed Oliver his other shoe to prove they made a pair. Oliver brought both shoes to his driver.
“They’re a pair all right,” the driver decided, “twenty-two-fifty by Wieboldt’s.”
When Oliver turned to return the shoes, Elisabeta was blocking his way.
“He got my handbag,” she explained, and snatched one of the shoes out of Oliver’s hands—“now I got his shoe.”
“Gimme my shoe, lady,” the boy demanded threateningly.
“When you give me back my handbag with my money in it.”
“I never took your handbag.”
“If you never took her handbag,” Oliver tried to figure out, “how come she got your shoe?”
“I loaned my shoes to a friend,” the boy answered quickly, “but he only returned one. He said an old lady stole the other off him. An old lady just this lady’s size. Maybe it was her, Officer.”
“Let me see the shoe again,” Oliver asked Elisabeta. She handed him the shoe. Oliver handed it to the driver once again. “Hold this,” he instructed the driver, “while I complete my investigation. You two,” he added to the boy and Elisabeta, “wait here.”
They waited, the driver holding the shoes, while Oliver went down the alley. He came back holding a handbag with its strap ripped off.
“Here’s your bag, lady,” he told Elisabeta, “now let the kid have his shoe.”
Elisabeta refused her bag.
“Look inside,” she instructed Oliver.
Oliver looked inside.
“Is there nineteen dollars in there?”
“No. Only a two-bit piece.”
“There was nineteen dollars in it when he snatched it.”
“Did you take this lady’s nineteen dollars?”
“Why should I take her nineteen dollars when I got nearly twenty of my own?”
Oliver really hated to arrest people. “If you got that much,” he reasoned with the youth now, “why don’t you give her nineteen dollars so you can get back your shoe?”
“I only paid twenty-two-fifty for the pair in the first place by Wieboldt’s. How can I afford to pay nineteen dollars now for just one?”
“That sounds reasonable,” Oliver agreed, “so why don’t you give her back eleven dollars then?”
“Eleven dollars I’ll give.”
“Will you settle out of court for eleven dollars, lady? Otherwise we all have to go to the station.”
Elisabeta settled out of court.
But she was taking note of Oliver’s number while she was settling.
“Oh, my God,” Little Stash hollered. “Big Stash! Take a look at this!”
Little Stash was waving an afternoon newspaper at Big Stash in a manner to indicate he had news that wouldn’t wait. Big Stash’s big moon face began breaking up into happy wrinkles and contented creases—“It’s him! It’s really him! They even got his picture!”
Bettors crowded around Big Stash but he folded the paper. “Go get your own news!” he commanded them.
Elisabeta had phoned in her story to the only Chicago columnist who she was sure was a hunky. He was only half Hungarian; but that was better, she knew, than not being Hungarian at all.
Reporters had come to check out her story and so had a photographer. How they’d gotten Oliver’s photograph was simple: they’d simply sent out another Hungarian and he’d stolen it.
And there the story was, with the name of everyone involved except that of the youth who’d snatched Elisabeta’s bag—the beauty part of it all being that Oliver himself didn’t realize he’d become the butt of a story on police ineptitude until it had been published and everybody on the West Side was laughing at him.
He came into the two Stashes that evening. Big Stash grabbed h
im from one side and Little Stash from the other. They put him down between them on the bench and both put their arms about him.
“Look at him!” Big Stash told Little Stash, taking Oliver’s chin and turning his face to Little Stash. “Look at whose picture got in the papers! Look at that puss! Chicago’s dumbest!”
“I never seen anything that dumb my whole life before,” Little Stash concluded, shaking his head incredulously, “it looks more like a hog leg than a head.”
“What’s so funny?” Oliver asked at last. “What’s the big joke about?”
“You’re the big joke it’s about,” Big Stash assured him and showed Oliver his photograph in the Daily News.
Both Stashes saw him pale. Oliver began looking around as if uncertain about where he was.
“Don’t feel bad just because you’re the rottenest cop in town,” Little Stash told him, “it’s a kind of honor in a way.”
“It ain’t your fault,” Big Stash attempted to comfort him too. “You were born to make people laugh. Play out the hand that’s been dealt you, buddy. It’s all you can do. You’re a clown, that’s all.”
“Are they laughing now?” Oliver asked quietly. He sounded like someone in another room asking if it looked like rain.
“Laughing? Are they laughing?” Little Stash asked. “They been laughing all day. The whole West Side is laughing.”
“Who on the West Side is laughing?” Oliver demanded to know. “Everybody, Oliver, everybody,” both bookies assured him, “and they never will stop laughing neither,” Big Stash added.
He sounded certain.
Oliver squeezed himself from between them and smoothed down his uniform. He saw the crowd of bettors consulting Forms and reading the results from Hawthorne, Belmont, Golden Gate, and Hialeah. He saw the morning line and he saw the mutuel window. He saw the man posting results. He pulled out his .38 and shot a clean hole into the results from Belmont. The crowd turned, gaping. When Oliver raised the gun at the results from Hawthorne, the whole mob bolted for the door.
Big Stash and Little Stash stood paralyzed. Oliver blew a stack of Racing Forms to the ceiling and, as they drifted down, fired again through the mutuel window.
“He only got one shot left,” Little Stash spoke last.
Oliver knew that too.
He took off his officer’s hat. He took off his officer’s jacket. He went, in his shirt sleeves, to the front of the bookie. The crowd drifted back yet drifted slowly, being held by curiosity.
“They’re off and running at Hialeah!” Oliver announced, and fired his last shot into the air. “They’re off and running at Golden Gate!” He pressed the trigger but the gun was empty. Yet he kept pressing it—“They’re off and running at Belmont! They’re off and running at Hawthorne! Let them all keep running! Let them horses run! Let them dogs howl! Let them cats meow! Let them lions roar! Let them kangaroos hop! Let them railroad trains whistle! Let them go! Let them all go!”
He paused, and the crowd became strangely quiet too. They were listening as though he were talking common sense.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Oliver now informed them quietly, “I regret to inform you that Christmas has been canceled. There will be no more Christmases.”
“Nowhere?” somebody from the crowd asked mockingly.
“No,” Oliver assured the voice, “henceforward there will be no more Christmases. Because there are no more Christmas trees.”
“How about Fourth of July, Professor?” the same voice persisted.
“There will be Fourth of July,” Oliver answered gravely. “There will be Halloween. There will be Thanksgiving. But there will be no more Christmases.”
The men from the wagon had no trouble getting him into the ambulance. He sat quietly, all the way to the psycho ward, saying nothing but “There will be no more Christmases.”
This was twenty years ago, in that time of year when tinfoil bells—red, green, golden, and deep purple—hang by silver strands in all the banks, in all the finance firms, in all Local Loans: that season when Save-Your-Home-Loans erects an all-aluminum tree bearing a slowly revolving silver-dollar sign, while lesser firms can offer nothing more atop their tress than a single, unmoving star.
And in all those twenty years, Oliver Katz has said only one sentence, over and over:
“There will be no more Christmases.”
WALK PRETTY ALL THE WAY
Nobody knows how you get started in the gump trade. Old Tom was in the business, I gather, before he ever met Lou. Only, of course, he never told her what he done for a living, I’m sure. Until she got knocked up and had to move in with him.
That was, of course, long before our time: my own and Jane’s. A whole flock of kids came along before us. Jane and me were the last.
But I can imagine what Lou’s reaction must have been the first day after their honeymoon, when Tom comes home smelling of gumps. Probably a couple he hadn’t sold still in his sack.
“My God, what is them stinking things?” Lou must have asked.
“Them is gumps, baby,” Tom would have told her.
“What in God’s name is a gump for God’s sake, outside of being something that smells like a dying chicken?”
“A gump ain’t nothin’ outside of bein’ a dying chicken, honey: A gump is a dying chicken.”
It’s been twenty years now since Tom first started going down to the poultry market in the early morning, to pick up the chickens that come in dead or dying. Sometimes, if they aren’t quite dead, he has to pay fifteen cents for them. Otherwise they’re glad to have him take the stinking things away. He gets two dollars for them in Niggertown.
When Jane and I looked out of our second-story room and saw boxcars, instead of a chicken yard, we cheered. We had finally gotten a little class, we felt.
Jane’s boyfriend, Ralph, is very strong on class.
“Baby,” he likes to tell Jane, “don’t you want to have class?”
Jane could hardly wait for Ralph to see the room we’d rented.
“He’s going to be awful proud of us,” she told me.
“Proud of you,” I set her right. “I don’t care what he thinks of me. He’s your boyfriend, not mine. It strikes me he’s pretty hard to please.”
Ralph had hardly come on the door before he’d made up his mind: “You call this class? Not even a rug on the floor?”
Jane looked so brought down that I went into the bathroom and threw a dozen towels around.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked me.
“Giving the joint class.”
“With towels?”
“Look at the name on them.”
Every towel had the name CLARIDGE in big green letters on it, and everybody in town knows you don’t get to stay at the Claridge for less than ten dollars a day.
“Put the towels back,” he told me. “You’ll need them against the day you take a bath.”
Ralph never did care much for me. I put the towels back all the same. I never cared much for him.
He began combing his hair with a big black comb. His hair is blond, he has a lot of it, all wavy. The sonofabitch is six foot two and never did a day’s work his whole life. When he combs his hair, it means he’s getting ready to sit down. Jane pulled up a chair.
He wasn’t quite ready. He had to light a cigarette first. He even offered Jane one. She took it because she was afraid if she didn’t, he might leave. I was ready for him to leave any time.
“Would you like to look out the back window, Ralph?” I asked him.
I didn’t get even a dirty look for an answer. Instead he squirrel-eyed me. I’d rather have somebody give me a straight dirty look than to squirrel-eye me like that.
“I don’t care about back windows,” he finally let us know. “What I’m interested in, is there a back stair?”
“We got a two-story stair, honey,” Jane told him, pleased that we finally had something he might like.
“I’m glad it goes all the way down to t
he ground,” he told us. “Now I want to know what time the old nigger turns in.”
We knew who he meant. The old guy we’d rented the place, furnished, from. He was a good old guy. His name was Jakes. We’d had to come down to Niggertown to rent because they’d be looking for us uptown. We were fourteen.
“What we have to do here,” Ralph let us know, “is get this junk out”—he waved at the floorlamp and the bed—“down the back stair. I’ll be back with a buddy tonight. So long, baby,” he told Jane, “walk pretty all the way.”
He didn’t tell me how to walk. He didn’t even say so long. He left without looking back. Some boyfriend.
“I wonder where we’re going to stay now” was all I said. I was kind of sorry to leave the old homestead.
We heard old Jakes turn in downstairs around nine p.m. We had our clothes all packed. Ralph and a buddy showed up around ten. So long as the stairs didn’t crack or squeak, there was no danger.
All I could see of Ralph’s buddy was a pair of dark glasses.
Jane and I carried down the pillows and sheets and the Claridge towels. Trouble was she’d say something like “Keep talking, keep talking,” which wouldn’t be funny to anyone else but would cause me to break up, and I’d say something back which wasn’t funny to anyone else but which would cause her to break up. Ralph got real hot at us for not taking this move seriously. “If you kids can’t talk sense,” he told us, “don’t say anything.”
So we shut up while we were carrying the stuff up the backstairs to his buddy’s apartment. It was stuffed to the roof with tables, chairs, and furniture till there was hardly a place to lie down. Jane and Ralph made out on the couch.
If it hadn’t been for all that hot furniture stacked around, I might have climbed in with the clown wearing the dark glasses. But he gave me the feeling that he’d trade me in for a divan or a davenport in the morning.
I crawled under a kitchen table and made out there until Jane pulled me out. It was daylight. “Ralph is gone,” she told me.