Dunfords Travels Everywheres

by William Melvin Kelley

  “Are you kidding?” Lane laughed. “Don’t you read the papers, or just books? We’re at war, but you don’t know it. Those groundskeepers were probably sent from the other side twenty years ago.”

  “He wasn’t even President twenty years ago.”

  “Not just to kill him, Marian. To cause trouble when the time was ripe.”

  “What’s so ripe about now?” Chig did not follow politics. The literature of nineteenth-century Europe took up most of his time. “I mean, compared to a year ago.”

  “Don’t you be naive too, Chigboy. You know what’s going on in the world.”

  “Sure, but are we having more trouble with the other side than we’ve always had?”

  “We’re having less trouble with them! And he’s responsible.” Frank’s eyes remained red. “They even respect him. They know he’s a smart man.”

  “Was.” Lane nodded slowly. “Was a smart man. And if he was so smart, why was it so easy to kill him? Did you ask yourself that, Frank?”

  “Even an Einstein or an Abraham couldn’t have stopped their guns. Not without knowing the plan, but then they would’ve failed, right?”

  “Ira, I want to be there when you hear the other side did it.”

  They reached the city; the traffic thickened, little streets packed with little cars, sidewalks shoulder-tight. Many natives that sunny summer Sunday wore their white undershirts, their pants alone telling what choice each had made that morning. Some already held newspapers at arm’s length, squinting at the pages. Others lined up, single file, Jualoreurso, Atzuoreurso, Jualoreurso, Atzuoreurso at news-stands, waiting silently for the latest editions. The city had changed color.

  Chig’s friends continued to talk as he watched the natives. Then Ira parked, and they climbed out and began to walk the three or four blocks to the Café of One Hand.

  They tried to stay together on the hot narrow sidewalk, but groups of natives kept forcing them apart. “Certainly, I have bought already food to last six months.” Chig understood them; he had registered at the Esceurla Laungua within a month of his arrival in the city, had done well. “A Commonist? You speak like a silly—something about his face that was not pleasing to me, perhaps—the ears of the regent may thus have found the door of the stable, my sir.”

  They stopped to buy two native newspapers. Mainly for Lane, Cleurdia read aloud from Lua Jeurnala dol Swora, translating into English: “Winging outside, the performers threw away their gloves of catch into the grass. The President had bend his back into his lap and to writing a small book that have buy it for the occasions, before the contest.”

  “What?”

  “For golly’s sake, Frank!”

  Frank shook his head. “I’ll have to read it myself.”

  “…ice of cream two and more times to permit the photographer license to photograph his children.”

  Marian stopped—Chig bumped into her, his thighs mashing her flat, soft buttocks. She turned to him, showed her crooked teeth.

  “Sorry, Marian.”

  “…making their walk of death toward him, weapons at the aim. One performer, he a Moorish, questioned by your corospondonto remarked that he had seen a weapon, but he it had believed to be the usual caretaking instrument. It is he telling too the authorities about the acorns the assassinuos weared.”

  Chig smiled, laughed inside, remembering a poem his father had often recited: Wherever you go, whatever you do, you’ll find a Tom, peeping on you.

  “To the Giants of Frost, my sirs!” Two Jualoreursos and three Atzuoreursos blocked the sidewalk in front of them. Busy with a wine bottle, they did not see Chig and his friends approaching.

  For a moment, the two groups met, merged: “I just bought a Rabbit. Now I am late to break her in.” Wendy moved closer to Chig. “To the Giants, then?” Above the drinker’s head, the red wine glowed, bubbling inside the shining upturned bottle. “Hear, little pig, is it that you prefer the Eagle to the Wild Boar?”

  Cleurdia ignored the question.

  “Hear, is it already the Eagle eats the apples?”

  Lane stopped, asked Frank what the native had said to him.

  “He was asking if we had invaded them.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He glanced back at the natives. A stocky hamster-faced Atzuoreurso stared after them. While they watched, he spat on the sidewalk. “Hey, hold it a second, Ira. Mr. Roomps is looking for trouble.”

  They stopped. Cleurdia peeked over the paper at each of them, then down the block toward the natives.

  “What did they say?” Ira turned around. “Come on, they’re booz—”

  “They said,” Frank explained, “something about our invading them.”

  “Today we lost our President.” Lane addressed Chig. “And I’m in no mood for stupid comments.”

  Chig studied the natives, who now stood abreast, soldiers in a film about some ancient kingdom. The bottle moved from hand to hand, waist high, then face high and tilted up, then again waist high, along the line. “Let’s not get into anything, Lane. We have the girls with us.”

  “But they’re celebrating his death.” Lane tried to convince Frank.

  Frank waited, then answered that he had always believed the President popular among the people of that country.

  “You’re all acting stupidly. I thought you had more sense than to get into a common street fight, Lane.” Wendy dropped her cigaret, ground it between two cobblestones with her toe, and started walking up the block. Cleurdia hurried after her.

  “Come on, honey.” Marian hugged Ira’s arm, pulled him away. “Wendy’s right.”

  Lane shrugged. “We have better things to do anyway.”

  They began to walk again. A block ahead, the overpass, a section of Roman viaduct, straddled the narrow street. Just beyond the overpass waited the café. But now the natives marched after them, three in the front rank, two in the second. The native with the hamster’s face, between two Jualoreursos, carried the bottle.

  Wendy reached the overpass first. The arch’s shadow closed around her—but soon the sun fired her yellow shorts and long legs.

  Then she stopped, shrank back as if threatened, relaxed, and turned around to face them. Chig passed under the arch last. Just on the far side, he discovered two figures in brown uniforms, crouched behind the pillars, policemen.

  When Chig had passed, the policemen stepped into the center of the street, executed quarter-turns to face the natives.

  “Halt. Hand us your identities.” They started forward, the backs of their brown tunics studded with gold buttons, trimmed with gold braid. Each policeman carried a smooth white club, three feet long. “Halt, I say!”

  The natives stopped, patted themselves, mumbling. The Atzuoreurso with the hamster’s face put the bottle on the cobblestones. “Ask them for their identities, my sir. They have offended.”

  “Identities, my sir.” The older policeman, tall, gray, his brown uniform frayed but neat, did the talking. “Is it that you do not realize that two of your number had chosen yellow-redness and three blueredness?”

  The older policeman’s partner, tiny, tidy, his uniform new, stood beside him, his neck tensed into his brown wool shoulders, beating his thigh with his club.

  “Their President has become killed. Tomorrow it will start war.”

  “Today, not tomorrow, we ask for your identities, my sir.”

  The Atzuoreurso balled his fist, opened his mouth, but the younger policeman, pouncing, stopped his voice, the knocking of his white club on the native’s head swollen by the arch’s echo. Soon, the native had sprawled to the cobblestones, the policeman over him, his brown arm rising, falling above the native’s head, ribs, and knees.

  The older policeman inspected their papers. “Now, my sirs, go to your houses. Your friend is in our care. And remember that all must abide t
he morning choice. The fate of the Eagle means no concern to you.”

  He returned their papers. Each native thanked him, nodded a good-bye to his friends and hurried back down the street, two Atzuoreursos on one sidewalk, two Jualoreursos on the other.

  The policemen helped their prisoner to his feet, holding him away from their uniforms. They gave quick salutes to Chig and his friends, and started away.

  “Wow.” Chig watched after them. “The last time I saw something like that I was on my way home from school and—” He turned and realized his friends did not listen. They had almost reached the door of the Café of One Hand.

  5

  CHIG’S FRIENDS TOOK PLACES around a large rectangular table on the Jualoreurso side of the Café of One Hand. Lane had steered Cleurdia to the far side and into the corner, taking the middle chair for himself. Ira sat next to him on one of the aisle chairs, across from Marian. Wendy faced Cleurdia, her black hair partly covering the back of her chair. Frank sat at the end of the table, in the aisle.

  A vacant chair waited between Wendy and Marian. “Here’s a place for you, Chig. I saved it. Right here. Sit down.”

  He waited for Marian to stop slapping the dark brittle wood, then sat down. The tiny policeman had moved so fast. “Did you see that cop work out?”

  “I keep my dealings with authorities to a minimum.” Ira frowned. “Don’t give him a chance to get his hand on you. Because once he gets you, we’re all the same. After he arrests you, the only thing that matters is that you’re a captive and he’s a captor. That’s what my father says.”

  “Maybe it’s that way in the big city, but out our way, we feel different about the police.”

  “There’s another way to feel about the police, Lane?” Ira winked at Chig.

  “You don’t think, Ira. Maybe that’s why you’re a real great artist.” Framed in his shaggy sandy hair, Lane’s ears grew red. “I was raised up in a small-town kind of environment and one thing I learned is that police are people. In a small town you get to know a policeman. He has a wife and kids. My father grew up with the sheriff in our town. He started deputy around the time my father went up to State. I knew him all my life. When I got to be a senior in Prairie Park High, I used to ride around in his patrol car. Saturday nights. Sometimes they’d call him, some trouble in the Pit. A cutting or something. Blood all over the place, loud music on the jukebox, a big ugly mess. And I’d go with him. He wasn’t just a policeman. He tried to help other people. We used to have a good time, me and Uncle Jorry Burrell.”

  Ira shrugged. “Well, maybe you’re right about small-town life. But in the city you’re just lost.”

  “Lots of lonely lovers in the city.” Marian nodded, quoting something. “Everyone’s looking for a hole to crawl into where they’ll say you’re home.”

  Lane stared across the table for a moment. “What’s the time, Frank?”

  “Three-forty.”

  “No wonder I’m so hungry.” He leaned back, rounded out his chest and stomach, slapped himself with both hands. “I’m eating.”

  “I’m hungry too.” Frank twisted in his seat, looking for the Jualoreurso waiter. Divided in two by the center aisle, each side of the café received service from a waiter wearing the proper-colored vest.

  The Jualoreurso waiter, a fat little man with dark hair watered flat, combed back, unparted, greeted them with a shrug of soft narrow shoulders. “My sirs, forgive. Forgive. What can this man say? Forgive.”

  “Now, what’s he trying to sell? Get me a menu, will you, Frank?”

  The waiter blinked, went on. “Is it that you have a revolution in your birthland? Forgive me to ask.” He shook his head.

  “Did he have a kid?” Lane pinched Cleurdia’s arm. “He didn’t want it, huh?”

  “He is asking Frank about the revolution in your country.”

  “What?”

  “…whose uncle, at this time current, living in the New Hershey. The day he departed, saying, I read the books historical. Fifty-five years without revolution, a land of peace. I have say him, one day, same as all men. That was in the year one thousand nine hundred twenty. It is not pleasing to me that I am right.” He held a pale yellow dishtowel, twisted it to rope.

  “There is no revolution,” Frank answered. “But if it becomes the slightest possibility that the Commonist has done it, it will bring the war possible.”

  “Tell him he was wrong, Frank. In 1920, it was a hundred thirty-one years since the Revolution.”

  “But, my sirs, I am he and we had having the profound respect for your President. We regarded him an aristocrat with sympathy for the poor, the kindly tyrant.”

  “You see, Lane?” Frank wagged his finger. “That’s what I told you before.”

  “He said he was on the other side, didn’t he?”

  Frank turned back to the waiter. “If the Commonist have not kill him, in that case, who has done it?”

  “Is it that you do not collect information in your affairs national?” The waiter raised his eyebrows, snapped the wrinkles from his towel. “The journal late of the Commonist has reported that he loved to nationalize the industry of metallics.” He waited for an answer, received none, took advantage of the silence to fetch their menus. He dropped them on the table and scurried away to a family in canvassy yellow cardigan jackets, a husband and wife, two small red-haired girls.

  “What did he say?” Lane took a menu, opened it on the table between Cleurdia and himself.

  “What do you want, Ira?” Marian’s menu rested on her breasts. “Why don’t you have…wait, I lost it.”

  “He said the President was going to nationalize steel.” Frank looked around the table. “I never heard that before.”

  “Have you ever tried the veal and bacon here, Chig?” Wendy shifted in her place, moving her thigh against his. She did not seem aware of it. “It’s very good.”

  He realized that his mouth hung open, closed it, trying to think of his answer.

  “I want beef stew and potatoes.” Lane came up from his menu. “Reason you never heard it, Frank, is because no President would dare do that. The Roomp was lying, or spreading a lie he read in some little mimeographed sheet.”

  Chig and his friends nodded, agreeing. Of course, the Commonists filled their paper with lies. “But he did make Frank’s point. The other side respected him. The President.”

  “They used him, Chig. But they never respected him. When he wasn’t useful anymore, they disposed of him.”

  “That’s not true, Lane.” Frank seemed deeply insulted. “He was his own man.”

  “His own man, huh? What about…Just forget it.”

  “You always do that, Lane. You start something and then let it drop. What about when? Go on, tell me.”

  Lane had stopped listening. He put his arm around Cleurdia’s shoulder, whispered into her ear, then gave her neck a little kiss. Her face remained still.

  Frank appealed to Ira. “You see that? He never finishes his thought.”

  “He’s busy.” Ira smiled. “Come back after lunch.”

  Chig and Marian laughed; Frank smiled. He still had blood on his upper lip, and brown polka-dots of blood spotted his yellow ascot.

  The waiter returned, a homemade pad of torn wrapping-paper in his hand, and took their orders. They all started with thick, black bean soup. After the soup, Wendy had ordered veal and bacon, with a small dish of a leafy, chewy vegetable seasoned with vinegar. Marian convinced Ira they both should have chicken spiced with marjoram, and potatoes. Cleurdia ate fish stuffed with cheese. As he had announced earlier, Lane got beef stew and potatoes. Frank, with a longing glance Cleurdia’s way, asked for fish stuffed with cheese. Chig ordered just after Wendy, echoed her. She did not smile.

  It did not bother him. He knew, despite their friends’ liberal attitudes, it would be difficult for her to take the
step of liking him, or even to show she considered it. In public, he expected no concrete sign. But he believed he had made progress. He enjoyed the meal Wendy had chosen. Finished, he leaned back in his chair, nicely dazed with food and dark red wine, and watched Frank spoon onto his plate the last of the beef stew Lane had ordered.

  “Okay, Lane?” Frank crossed his arms, steam from the stew rising to his raised chin. “Is that okay? You don’t mind me finishing your stew, do you?”

  “No, Frank.” He paused. “But I thought you weren’t supposed to eat meat on Sunday.”

  “That’s Friday, and—”

  “Oh, I thought it was Sunday.”

  “It is Sunday, Lane,” Ira commented. “Just another working day.”

  Marian and Chig laughed.

  Frank ignored them. “Just as long as you don’t mind me finishing your stew.” He held a chunk of meat on his fork. “And, by the way, did you come up with that date yet?”

  Lane looked up from his plate. “Date?”

  “Yes, you were about to tell me the date the other side used the President.” He ate the meat-chunk. “The late President.”

  “No, I was not. That’s what you thought I’d do.” Lane popped a potato into his mouth, continued: “Much, much more sophisticated than that.” He swallowed. “People guide you and you don’t even know it. You don’t have simple traitors anymore like Benedict Arnold.”

  “How can you talk about them in the same context? One was a general, and—”

  “I lump them together because each in his own way, Frank, remember that, each in his own way, let his country down.” He waved his hand in Frank’s face. “Wittingly or unwittingly. His pattern shows what he was. The things he did all along the line. As if he was driven to it, destined to do it.” He shook his head. “That’s the thing, Frank. I’m not saying he meant to be a traitor. Maybe he honestly thought he was doing the right thing.”

  “That’s just not true.” When he got excited, Frank’s voice went high, but not squeaky. “His actions showed he had a vision of the future. And I’m sure he always had a moral base for what he did.”