About two o’clock in the afternoon I found Louie. He was sitting at a table in the back room of one of the cheaper side street places. A bottle half full of bar whisky was on the table in front of him. The knuckles of the hand which held the glass were skinned and bleeding. His eyes were heavily glazed and staring with fixed intensity. He was mumbling as I came up to the table.
He looked up at me. “Oh, there you are,” he said thickly.
I pushed the bottle of whisky to one side. “How about coming home, Louie?”
He frowned. “Say, thash right. I got a home, ain’t I? I— Oh, my God.” He stood up and plunged his hand into his trousers pocket, brought out two one-dollar bills and some chicken feed.
“You know what I done, buddy?” he asked, his glazed eyes surveying me with that fixed glassy stare. “I shpent that money you gave me — all that was left from the groceries ’cept this — booze. That’s my failin’. I feel the cravin’ comin’ on every so often, and when it hits me, I can’t—”
“Who was it you socked, Louie?” I asked.
He looked down at his knuckles and scowled. “Now thash funny. I thought I hit somebody, and then I thought it was jusht sort of an idea a man’ll get when he’s been drinkin’. It might ‘a’ been the last time. Wait a minute. Let me think.
“I’ll tell you who it was. It was Sid Jannix. Was in line for a title once. A good boy — plenty good, but I give him the old one-two. Lemme show you how it goes, the old Hazen shift. I won the championship in the Navy — it must have been the championship — sure, it was in Honolulu inlet me see now. Was it—”
“Come on, Louie, we’re going home.”
“You ain’t sore about that money, kid?”