Entrapment and Other Writings by Nelson Algren

Author:Nelson Algren [Algren, Nelson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58322-941-5
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2011-01-04T05:00:00+00:00

ENTRAPMENT

I. Barrel of Fun

The man who was letting everything go was sleeping one off in all his clothes. Six a.m. barely pinpointed the careworn shade of the second-rate hotel. The curtains were drawn as he had drawn them. Rain was on the walks below. Above the darkened TV screen a little clock made a muted ticking. In the utmost country of his brain the sleeper heard a ceaseless tolling. Marking some grief so distant that no wind but the one that blows in sleep might bring it. News of a lost day too dear for losing. Belled by some wind that once helped him home.

Perhaps it was the crash and screech of the traffic below that caused him to dream, for often his ears would be ringing and his eyes blinded by the whir and glare of these machines, and he would be conscious of himself lying, as though flung there, across the bed of the darkened room, hearing his own troubled breathing as he struggled to waken and could not.

The dream that had come to dominate his nights was that of climbing a wide stone stair in which puddles still stood in the worn places of the stone. As though from a late afternoon scrubbing or an evening rain. It was a poor man’s building. One sensed that the stone staircase was the only part that was ever cleaned, or upon which the sunlight ever shone. And he would feel an odd twinge of pity or remorse at the worn places in those steps, for so many human feet shuffling up and down for so many years, as though the worn places had been made by so many human knees in prayer that the staircase had become a sort of altar for having borne so much humanity …

A short Get-The-Hell-Out-Of-My-Way klaxon’s blast lit a little red warning in his shuttered skull, and he wakened at last, listening for some final, some incredible sound that would at once explain everything and seal his life forever. But all he heard was a door closing somewhere and the muted ticking of the tiny clock beside the old-fashioned dresser.

Fumbling at his open and tieless collar as though it still felt buttoned and tied, he thought, hell of way for a man to wake up—hell of an hour. His eyes searched accusingly for the little clock’s prim face. His fingers found his collar button, thread-loose. This just isn’t my day.

On its side on the dresser lay an empty gin fifth half-covered by yesterday’s racing form. Did I pour the last of that down the drain or did I just dream I did? I hope I poured so much that I’ll still wake up clear-headed.

No, I hope I didn’t pour off a solitary drop. Because I might as well be dead as feeling like this. I might just as well have had it all.

I hope I got it all, that would serve me right for feeling this bad. No, I hope I drank just enough so’s it couldn’t be my day today.

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